
(lass 
Book. 



PRESENTED BY 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/womenofbelgiumtuOOkell 



WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

TURNING TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH 



By 
CHARLOTTE KELLOGG 



With an Introduction By 

HERBERT C. HOOVER 

Chairman of The Commission for Belief in Belgium 



SIXTH EDITION 




FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
1917 



IV 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

[Printed in the United States of America] 
Published in April, 1917 



Oy 



Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention 

of the Pan-American Republics of the 

United States, August 11, 1910. 



CONTENTS 



OHAPTEB 

Introduction .... 

I. The Leaders . „ . . 

II. The "Soupes" .... 

III. The Cradles on the Meuse 

IV. "The Little Bees' , . . 
V. Mrs. Whitlock's Visit . 

VI. The Bathtub .... 

VII. The Bread in the Hand . 
VIII. One Woman ...... 

IX. The City of the Cardinal 
X. The Teachers .... 

XL Gabrielle's Baby . . . 
XII. The "Drop of Milk" . . 

XIII. Layettes ..... 

XIV. The Skating-Rink at Liege 
XV. A Zeppelin .... 

XVI. New Uses of a Hippodrome 
XVII. The Antwerp Music-Hall 
XVIII. Lace 

iii 



PAGE 

vii 

i 
n 
27 
33 
49 
55 
61 

7i 
83 
93 
105 
in 
117 
123 
134 
137 
149 

158 



iv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX. A Toy Factory 167 

XX. Another Toy Factory . . . .174 

XXI. The Mutiles ....... 179 

XXII. The Little Package . . . . .186 

XXIII. The Green Box 190 

XXIV. The "Mother of Belgium'' ... 204 
XXV. "Out" . . , 208 

XXVI. Farewell . • „ 209 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



!A1 "Little Bees" Dining-room for Sub- 
normal Children . . Frontispiece 

Ready for the Children ..... 36 
A "Little Bees" cantine for sub-normal chil- 
dren. 

A Meal for Young Mothers . t . 3 . .112 

One Corner of the Brussels Hippodrome, 
Now a Central Clothing Supply 
Station . . L . 144 

The Antwerp Music-hall, Now a Sew- 
ing-room , ;. . 152 

Here hundreds of women are being saved by 
being furnished the opportunity to work 
two weeks in each month, on an average 
wage of sixty cents a week. 

The Supplementary Meal the Relief 
Committee Is Now Trying to Give 
to 1,250,000 School Children ... .. 160 

Toys Created By Women of Belgium. . 176 

1,662 Children, Made Sub-normal by the 
War, Waiting for Their Dinner . 204 
v 



INTRODUCTION 

By Herbert Hoover 

Belgium,, after centuries of intermittent 
misery and recuperation as the cockpit of 
Europe, had with a hundred years of the 
peaceful fruition of the intelligence, cour- 
age, thrift, and industry of its people, 
emerged as the beehive of the Continent. 
Its population of 8,000,000 upon an area 
of little less than Maryland was supported 
by the importation of raw materials, and 
by their manufacture and their exchange 
over-seas for two-thirds of the vital 
necessities of its daily life. 

When in the summer of 19 14 the peo- 
ple were again drawn into the European 
maelstrom, 600,000 of them became fugi- 
tives abroad, and the remainder were re- 

Tii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

duced to the state of a city which, cap- 
tured by a hostile army, is in turn besieged 
from without. Thus, its boundaries were 
a wall of bayonets and a blockading fleet. 

Under modern economic conditions, no 
importing nation carries more than a few 
weeks' reserve stock of food, depending 
as it does upon the daily arrivals of com- 
merce; and the cessation of this inflow, 
together with the destruction and requisi- 
tion of their meager stocks, threatened 
the Belgians with an even greater catas- 
trophe — the loss of their very life. 

With the stoppage of the industrial 
clock, their workpeople were idle, and des- 
titution marched day and night into their 
slender savings, until to-day three and a 
half million people must be helped in 
charity. 

The Belgians are a self-reliant people 
who had sought no favors of the world, 
and their first instinct and continuing en- 
deavor has been to help themselves. Not 



INTRODUCTION ix 

only were all those who had resources in- 
sistent that they should either pay now or 
in the future for their food, but far be- 
yond this, they have insisted upon caring 
for their own destitute to the fullest ex- 
tent of those remaining resources — the 
charity of the poor toward the poor. They 
have themselves set up no cry for benevo- 
lence, but the American Relief Commis- 
sion has insisted upon pleading to the 
world to help in a burden so far beyond 
their ability. 

This Commission was created in order 
that by agreement with the belligerents 
on both sides, a door might be opened in 
the wall of steel, through which those who 
had resources could re-create the flow of 
supplies to themselves; that through the 
same channel, the world might come to 
the rescue of the destitute, and beyond 
this that it could guarantee the guardian- 
ship of these supplies to the sole use of 
the people. 



x INTRODUCTION 

Furthermore, due to the initial moral, 
social and economic disorganization of the 
country and the necessary restriction on 
movement and assembly, it was impossible 
for the Belgian people to project within 
themselves, without an assisting hand, the 
organization for the distribution of food 
supplies and the care of the impoverished. 
Therefore the Relief Organization has 
grown to a great economic engine that 
with its collateral agencies monopolizes 
the import food supply of a whole people, 
controlling directly and indirectly the 
largest part of the native products so as 
to eliminate all waste and to secure 
justice in distribution; and, above all, 
it is charged with the care of the des- 
titute. 

To visualize truly the mental and 
moral currents in the Belgian people dur- 
ing these two and a half years one must 
have lived with them and felt their misery. 
Overriding all physical suffering and all 



INTRODUCTION xi 

trial is the great cloud of mental depres- 
sion, of repression and reserve in every 
act and word, a terror that is so real that 
it was little wonder to us when in the 
course of an investigation in one of the 
large cities we found the nursing period 
of mothers has been diminished by one- 
fourth. Every street corner and every 
crossroad is marked by a bayonet, and 
every night resounds with the march of 
armed men, the mark of national subjec- 
tion. Belgium is a little country and the 
sound of the guns along a hundred miles 
of front strikes the senses hourly, and the 
hopes of the people rise and fall with the 
rise and fall in tones which follow the 
atmospheric changes and the daily rise 
and fall of battle. Not only do hope of 
deliverance and anxiety for one's loved 
ones fighting on the front vibrate with 
every change in volume of sound, but with 
every rumor which shivers through the 
population. At first the morale of a 



xii INTRODUCTION 

whole people was crusht: one saw it in 
every face, deadened and drawn by 
the whole gamut of emotions that had 
exhausted their souls, but slowly, and 
largely by the growth of the Relief Or- 
ganization and the demand that it has 
made upon their exertion and their devo- 
tion, this morale has recovered to a fine 
flowering of national spirit and stoical 
resolution. The Relief Commission stands 
as an encouragement and protection to the 
endeavors of the Belgian people them- 
selves and a shield to their despair. By 
degrees an army of 55,000 volunteer 
workers on Relief had grown up among 
the Belgian and French people, of a per- 
fection and a patriotism without parallel 
in the existence of any country. 

To find the finance of a nation's relief 
requiring eighteen million dollars monthly 
from economic cycles of exchange, from 
subsidies of different governments, from 
the world's public charity; to purchase 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

300,000,000 pounds of concentrated food- 
stuffs per month of a character appro- 
priate to individual and class; to secure 
and operate a fleet of seventy cargo ships, 
to arrange their regular passages through 
blockades and war zones; to manage the 
reshipment by canal and rail and distribu- 
tion to 140 terminals throughout Belgium 
and Northern France ; to control the mill- 
ing of wheat and the making of bread; to 
distribute with rigid efficiency and justice 
not only bread but milk, soup, potatoes, 
fats, rice, beans, corn, soap and other 
commodities; to create the machinery of 
public feeding in cantines and soup- 
kitchens; to supply great clothing estab- 
lishments; to give the necessary assur- 
ances that the occupying army receives no 
benefit from the food supply; to maintain 
checks and balances assuring efficiency 
and integrity — all these things are a 
man's job. To this service the men of 
Belgium and Northern France have given 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

the most stedfast courage and high in- 
telligence. 

Beyond all this, however, is the equally 
great and equally important problem — 
the discrimination of the destitute from 
those who can pay, the determination of 
their individual needs — a service efficient, 
just and tender in its care of the 
helpless. 

To create a network of hundreds of 
cantines for expectant mothers, growing 
babies, for orphans and debilitated chil- 
dren; to provide the machinery for sup- 
plemental meals for the adolescent in the 
schools; to organize workrooms and to 
provide stations for the distribution of 
clothing to the poor; to see that all these 
reliefs cover the field, so that none fall by 
the wayside; to investigate and counsel 
each and every case that no waste or 
failure result; to search out and provide 
appropriate assistance to those who would 
rather die than confess poverty; to direct 



INTRODUCTION xv 

these stations, not from committee meet- 
ings after afternoon tea, but by actual 
executive labor from early morning till 
late at night — to go far beyond mere di- 
rection by giving themselves to the actual 
manual labor of serving the lowly and 
helpless ; to do it with cheerfulness, sympa- 
thy and tenderness, not to hundreds 
but literally to millions, this is woman's 
work. 

This service has been given, not by 
tens, but by thousands, and it is a 
service that in turn has summoned a de- 
votion, kindliness and tenderness in the 
Belgian and French women that has 
welded all classes with a spiritual bond 
unknown in any people before. It has 
implanted in the national heart and the 
national character a quality which is in 
some measure a compensation for the 
calamities through which these people are 
passing. The soul of Belgium received a 
grievous wound, but the women of Bel- 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

gium are staunching the flow — sustain- 
ing and leading this stricken nation to 
greater strength and greater life. 

We of the Relief have been proud of 
the privilege to place the tools in the 
hands of these women, and have watched 
their skilful use and their improvement in 
method with hourly admiration. We 
have believed it to be so great an inspira- 
tion that we have daily wished it could be 
pictured by a sympathizing hand, and we 
confess to insisting that Mrs. Kellogg 
should spend some months with her hus- 
band during his administration of our 
Brussels office. She has done more than 
record in simple terms passing impres- 
sions of the varied facts of the great 
work of these women, for she spent 
months in loving sympathy with them. 

We offer her little book as our, and 
Mrs. Kellogg's, tribute in admiration of 
them and the inspiration which they have 
contributed to this whole organization. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

This devotion and this service have now- 
gone on for nearly 900 long days. Under 
unceasing difficulties the tools have been 
kept in the hands of these women, and 
they have accomplished their task. All of 
this time there have stood behind them 
our warehouses with from thirty to sixty 
days' supplies in advance, and tragedy 
has thus been that distance remote. Our 
share and the share of these women has 
therefore been a task of prevention, not a 
task of remedy. Our task and theirs has 
been to maintain the laughter of the chil- 
dren, not to dry their tears. The pathos 
of the long lines of expectant, chattering 
mites, each with a ticket of authority 
pinned to its chest or held in a grimy fist, 
never depresses the mind of childhood. 
Nor does fear ever enter their little heads 
lest the slender chain of finance, ships 
and direction which supports these ware- 
houses should fail, for has the can- 
tine ever failed in all these two and a 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

half years ? That the day shall not come 
when some Belgian woman amid her tears 
must stand before its gate to repeat: 
"Mes petites, il n'y en a plus/' is simply 
a problem of labor and money. In this 
America has a duty, and the women of 
America a privilege. 

Herbert Hoover. 



WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

TURNING TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH 



THE LEADERS 

THE story of Belgium will never be 
told. That is the word that passes 
oftenest between us. No one will 
ever by word of mouth or in writing give 
it to others in its entirety, or even tell 
what he himself has seen and felt. The 
longer he stays the more he realizes the 
futility of any such attempt, the more he 
becomes dumb. It requires a brush and 
color beyond our grasp; it must be the 
picture of the soul of a nation in travail, 
of the lifting of the strong to save the 
weak. We may, however, choose certain 
angles of vision from which we see, 
l 



2 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

thrown into high relief, special aspects of 
an inexpressible experience. 

One of these particular developments is 
the unswerving devotion of the women of 
Belgium to all those hurt or broken by 
the tragedy within and without her gates. 
How fortunate are these women, born to 
royal leadership, to have found in their 
Queen the leader typifying the highest 
ideal of their service, and the actual com- 
rade in sorrow, working shoulder to 
shoulder with them in the hospitals and 
kitchens. The battle-lines may separate 
her wounded and suffering from theirs, 
but they know always that she is there, 
doing as they are doing, and more than 
they are doing. 

Never were sovereigns more loved, 
more adored than Albert and Elizabeth. 
All through these two years people have 
been borne up by the vision of the day of 
their return. "But how shall we be able 
to stand it?" they say. "We shall go mad 



THE LEADERS 3 

with joy!" "We shall not be able to 
speak for weeping and shouting!" "We 
shall march from the four corners of the 
country on foot in a mighty pilgrimage to 
Brussels, the King shall know what we 
think of him as man and leader!" 

When they speak of the Queen all 
words are inadequate; they place her first 
as woman, as mother, as tender nurse. 
They are proud, and with reason, of her 
intelligence and sound judgment. Under 
her father, a distinguished oculist, she 
received a most rigorous education; she 
is equipped in brain as well as in heart 
for her incalculable responsibilities. I was 
told the other day that she dislikes ex- 
ceedingly having her photograph as 
"nurse" circulate, feeling that people may 
think she wishes to be known for her good 
works. But whether she wishes it or not, 
she is known and will be known through- 
out history for her good works — for her 
clear, clean vision of right, her swift 



4 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

courage, and her utter devotion to each 
and all of her people. Albert and Eliza- 
beth, A and E, these letters are written 
on the heart of Belgium. 

If in the United States we have been 
too far away to realize in detail what the 
work of the Queen has been, we have had 
on our own shores the unforgettable ex- 
ample of her dear friend, Marie de Page, 
to prove to us the heroism of the women 
of Belgium. 

Before she came, we knew of her. After 
the first two months of the war she had 
left her mother and father and youngest 
boy in Brussels — realizing that she was 
cutting herself off from all news of them — 
to follow her husband, who had himself 
followed his King to Le Havre. She 
worked her way across the frontier to 
Flushing, and finally to La Panne. The 
whole career of Doctor de Page had been 
founded on her devoted cooperation, and 
one has imagined the joy of that reunion 



THE LEADERS 5 

in the great base hospital at La Panne, 
where he was in charge. Her eldest son 
was already in the trenches, the second, 
seventeen years old, was waiting his turn. 

She worked as a nurse at her husband's 
side, day and night, until she could no 
longer bear to see the increasing needs of 
the wounded without being able to relieve 
them, and she determined to seek aid in 
America. This journey, even in peace 
time, is a much more formidable under- 
taking for an European than for an 
American woman, but Marie de Page 
started alone, encouraged always by her 
good friend, the Queen. And how swiftly, 
how enduringly, she won our hearts, as 
from New York to San Francisco she told 
so simply and poignantly her country's 
story ! 

She was a Belgian woman; so, even in 
her great trouble, she could not neglect 
her personal appearance, and after the 
fatiguing journey across the Continent, 



6 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

she looked fresh and charming as we met 
her in San Francisco. The first day at 
luncheon we were plying her with ques- 
tions, until finally she laughed and said, 
"If you don't mind, I had better spread 
the map on the table — then you will see 
more quickly all the answers!'' We 
moved our plates while she took the pre- 
cious plan from her bag, and smoothed 
it across her end of the table. Then with 
her pencil she marked of! with a heavy 
line the little part that is still free Bel- 
gium: she drew a star in front of La 
Panne Hospital and we were orientated! 
From point to point her pencil traveled 
as we put our eager questions. We mar- 
veled at the directness with which she 
brought her country and her people be- 
fore us. We knew that her own son was 
in the trenches, but she made it impossible 
for us to think of herself. 

Then, tho there was much more to be 
done in America, she left. She must re- 



THE LEADERS 7 

turn to La Panne; her husband needed 
her. She had just received word that her 
seventeen-year-old son was to join his 
brother in the trenches; she hurried to 
New York. She did not wish to book 
on a non-neutral line, but further word 
showed her that her only chance to see 
her boy lay in taking the fastest possible 
ship. Fortunately the biggest, safest one 
was just about to leave, so she carried on 
board the money and supplies she was 
taking back to her people. 

We settled down to doing what we 
could to carry forward her work. Then, 
on May 7, 1915, flashed the incredible, 
the terrible news — the greatest passenger 
liner afloat had been torpedoed! The 
Lusitania had sunk in twenty-two min- 
utes, 1,198 lives had been lost. We went 
about dazed. 

One by one the recovered bodies were 
identified, and among them was that of 
Marie de Page. 



8 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

We have found some little consolation 
in endowing beds in her memory in the 
hospital for which she gave her life. She 
is buried in the sand dunes not far from 
it; whenever Doctor de Page looks from 
his window, he looks on her grave. 

"In" 

As the only American woman member 
of the Commission for Relief I was per- 
mitted to enter Belgium in July, 191 6. 

I already knew that this country held 
3,000,000 destitute ; that over one and one- 
quarter million depended for existence en- 
tirely on the daily "soupes" ; that between 
the soup-lines and the rich (who in every 
country, in every catastrophe, can most 
easily save themselves) there were those 
who, after having all their lives earned a 
comfortable living, now found their 
sources of income vanished, and literally 
faced starvation. For this large body, 
drawn from the industrial, commercial 



THE LEADERS 9 

and professional classes, from the nobil- 
ity itself, the suffering was most acute, 
most difficult to discover and relieve. 

I knew that at the beginning of the 
war the great organizing genius of Her- 
bert Hoover had seized the apparently 
unsolvable problem of the Relief of Bel- 
gium, and with an incredible swiftness 
had forced the cooperation of the world 
in the saving of this people who had not 
counted the cost of defending their honor. 
That because of this, every day in the 
month, ships, desperately difficult to se- 
cure, were pushing across the oceans with 
their cargoes of wheat and rice and bacon, 
to be rushed from Rotterdam through the 
canals to the C. R. B. warehouses through- 
out Belgium. It meant the finding of 
millions of money — $250,000,000 to date 
— begging of individuals, praying to gov- 
ernments, the pressing of all the world to 
service. 

I realized, too, that the Belgian men, 



10 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

under the active leadership of Messieurs 
Solvay, Francqui, de Wouters and 
Janssen, with a joint administration of 
Americans and Belgians, were organized 
into the Comite National, whose activities 
covered every square foot of the country, 
determining the exact situation, the exact 
need of each section, and who were re- 
sponsible for the meeting of the situation 
locally and as a whole. 

But I knew from the lips of the Chair- 
man of the C. R. B. himself, that despite 
all the work of the splendid men of these 
organizations, the martyrdom of Belgium 
was being prevented by its women. I 
was to learn in what glorious manner, in 
what hitherto undreamed of degree, this 
was true — that the women of Belgium, 
true to the womanhood and motherhood 
of all ages, were binding the wounds and 
healing the soul of their country! 



II 



THE "SOUPES" 

1 SHALL never think of Belgium 
without seeing endless processions of 
silent men and black-shawled women, 
pitchers in hand, waiting, waiting for the 
day's pint of soup. One and one-quarter 
million make a long procession. If you 
have imagined it in the sunshine, think 
of it in the rain! 

One may shut himself up in his house 
and forget the war for a few hours, but 
he dare not venture outside. If he does 
he will quickly stumble against a part of 
this line, or on hundreds of little chil- 
dren guarding their precious cards as 
they wait to be passed in to one of the 
"Enfants Debiles" dining-rooms, or on a 
very long line of women in front of a 
11 



12 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

communal store where "identity cards" 
permit the purchase every week of limited 
rations of American bacon or rice and a 
few other foods at fixt prices (prices set 
by American efficiency below those of 
America itself) ; or on a group of black- 
shawled mothers waiting for the dinner 
that enables them to nurse the babies in 
their arms. 

The destitute must have a "supple- 
ment" to their daily ration of carbo- 
hydrates and fat which will give them 
protein — says the C. R. B., and thus we 
have "Soupes"; — but these dry state- 
ments of engineers now become dieticians 
convey to no one the human story of 
these dumb, waiting lines. 

We can have little conception of what 
it means for just one city, the Agglomera- 
tion of Brussels, for instance, to keep 
200,000 out of its 1,000,000 people on 
the "Soupes," not for a month or two, 
but for over two years! Nor does this 



THE "SOUPES" IS 

include the soup made by the "Little 
Bees/' an organization which cares espe- 
cially for children, for the thousands in 
their cantines; or the soup served to the 
8,500 children in sixty communal schools 
of central Brussels at four o'clock each 
afternoon, which is prepared in a special 
kitchen. These quantities are all over and 
above the regular soup served to 200,000 
— and do not think of soup as an Ameri- 
can knows it, think more of a kind of 
stew; for it is thick, and, in the words of 
the C. R. B., "full of calories/' 

To make it for central Brussels the 
slaughter-house has been converted into 
a mighty kitchen, in charge of a famous 
pre-war maitre d'hotel. Ninety-five cooks 
and assistants from the best restaurants 
of the capital have been transferred from 
the making of pates and souffles to the 
daily preparation of 25,000 quarts of 
soup! And they use the ingenuity born 
of long experience, to secure an appetiz- 



14 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

ing variety while strictly following the 
orders of directing physicians. They had 
been doing this over 700 days when I 
visited the kitchen, but there was still a 
fresh eagerness to produce something 
savory and different. And one must re- 
member that the changes can come only 
from shifting the emphasis from our dried 
American peas to beans, from carrots to 
cabbages, from macaroni to rice. The 
quantity of meat remains about the same, 
1,200 pounds a day, which, tho the com- 
mittee kills its own cattle, costs almost 
fifty cents a pound. There must be, too, 
10,000 pounds of potatoes. The great 
fear has been that this quantity might be, 
cut, and unfortunately, in November, 
19 1 6, that fear was realized to the extent 
of a 2,000 pound drop — and then remedied 
by the C. R. B. with more beans, more 
rice, more peas! 

Personal inspection of this marvelous 
kitchen is the only thing that could give 



THE "SOUPES" 15 

an idea of its extraordinary cleanliness. 
The building offers great space, plenty of 
air and light and unlimited supply of 
water. The potato rooms, where each 
potato is put through two peeling pro- 
cesses, are in one quarter. Near them 
are the green vegetable rooms with their 
stone troughs, where everything is washed 
four or five times. The problem of pur- 
chasing the vegetables is so great that a 
special committee has been formed at 
Malines to buy for Brussels on the spot. 
One of the saving things for Belgium has 
been that she produces quantities of these 
delicious greens. In the smaller towns a 
committeeman usually goes each morning 
to market the day's supply. For instance, 
the lawyer who occupies himself with the 
vegetables for the Charleroi soup, makes 
his own selection at four o'clock each 
morning, and is extravagantly proud of 
the quality of his carrots and lettuces! 
The most important section, naturally, 



16 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

is that which cares for the meat and un- 
smoked bacon or "lard" the C. R. B. 
brings in. The more fat in the soup, the 
happier the recipient ! With the little meat 
that can still be had in the butcher shop, 
selling at over one dollar a pound, one can 
imagine what it means to find a few pieces 
in the pint of soup! Then there is the 
great kitchen proper, with the one hun- 
dred and forty gas-heated caldrons, and 
the dozens of cooks hurrying from one 
to another. There seem to be running 
rivers of water everywhere, a perpetual 
washing of food and receptacles and 
premises. 

The first shift of cooks arrives at two- 
thirty in the morning to start the gas 
under the one hundred and forty great 
kettles, for an early truck-load of cans 
must be off at 8 o'clock. That shift leaves 
at noon; the second works from 8 till 5, 
on an average wage of four francs a day 
and soupe! 



THE "SOUPES" 17 

There are ten of the large trucks and 
500 of the fifty-quart cans in constant 
use. As soon as the 8 o'clock lot come 
back, they are quickly cleaned, refilled, 
and hurried off on their second journey. 
Mostly they are hurried off through rain, 
for there are many more rainy than sunny 
days in Belgium. 

One passes a long line of patient, wet, 
miserable-looking men and women with 
their empty pitchers, then meets with a 
thrill the red truck bringing the steam- 
ing cans. The bakers have probably 
already delivered the 25,000 loaves of 
bread, for a half loaf goes with each 
pint of soup. 

By following one of these steaming 
trucks I discovered "Soupe 18," with its 
line of silent hundreds stretching along 
the wet street. 

I was half an hour early, so there was 
time to talk with the local committee man- 
agers who were preparing the big hall for 



18 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

the women who would arrive in a few 
minutes to fill the pitchers with soup, and 
the string bags with bread. These com- 
munal soupes are generally directed by 
men, tho women do the actual serving. 
The enthusiastic secretary, who had been 
a tailor before the war, said regretfully 
that he had been obliged to be absent 
three days in the two years. 

At the left, near the entrance, I was 
shown the office with all the records, and 
with the shelves of precious pots of jam 
and tiny packages of coffee and rice 
which are given out two or three times a 
month — in an attempt to make a little 
break in the monotony of the continual 
soup. No one can picture the heart- 
breaking eagerness in the faces of these 
thousands as they line up for this special 
distribution — these meager spoonfuls of 
jam, or handfuls of chopped meat. 

We reviewed the army of cans sta- 
tioned toward the rear, and the great 



THE "SOUPES" 19 

bread-racks of either side. The commit- 
tee of women arrived; we tasted the soup 
and found it good. I was asked to sit at 
the table with two men directors, where 
I might watch them stamp and approve 
the ration-cards as the hungry passed in. 

One may hate war, but never as it 
should be hated until he has visited the 
communal soupes and the homes repre- 
sented by the lines. The work must be 
so carefully systematized that there is 
only time for a word or two as they pass 
the table. But that word is enough to re- 
veal the tragedy! There are sometimes 
the undeserving, but it is not often that 
any of the thousands who file by are not 
in pitiful straits. That morning the sad- 
dest were the very old — for them the 
men had always a kindly "How is it, 
mother? How goes it, father?" 

The "Merci, Monsieur, merci beau- 
coup/' of one sweet-faced old woman was 
so evidently the expression of genuine 



20 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

feeling, that I asked about her. She had 
three sons, who had supported her well — 
all three were in the trenches. Another 
still older, said, "Thank you very much," 
in familiar English. She, too, had been 
caught in the net, and there was no work. 
A little Spanish woman had lost her hus- 
band soon after the war began, and the 
director who investigated the case was 
convinced that he had died of hunger. 
An old French soldier on a crutch, but 
not too feeble to bow low as he said 
"Merci," was an unforgettable figure. 

Some of the very old and very weak 
are given supplementary tickets which 
entitle them to small portions of white 
bread, more adapted to their needs than 
the stern war bread of the C. R. B.; 
and every two days mothers are allowed 
additional bread for their children. One 
curly-haired little girl was following her 
mother and grandmother, and slipt out 
of the line to offer a tiny hand. Then 



THE "SOUPES" «l 

came a tall, distinguished-looking man, 
about whom the directors knew little — 
except that he was absolutely without 
funds. They put kindly questions to the 
poor hunchback, who had just returned to 
the line from the hospital, and congrat- 
ulated the pretty girl of fifteen, who had 
won all the term's prizes in the com- 
munal school. There were those who 
had never succeeded; then there were 
those who two years before had been 
comfortable — railway employees, artists, 
men and women, young and old, in end- 
less procession, a large proportion in 
carpet slippers, or other substitutes for 
leather shoes. Many were weak and ill- 
looking; all wore the stamp of war. 
Every day they must come for the pint 
of soup and the bread that meant life — 
200,000 in Brussels alone; in Belgium 
one and a half million! These are the 
lowest in the scale of misery — those who 
"must have a supplement of protein/' for 



22 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

meat never passes their lips but in soup. 

The questions were always swift, ad- 
mitting no delay in the reply, and know- 
ing the hearts of the questioners, I won- 
dered a little at this. Till in a flash I 
saw: if the directors wished to know 
more they would go to the homes repre- 
sented — but the line must not be held 
back! Every ten minutes' halt means 
that those outside in the rain must stand 
ten minutes longer. On this particular 
day the committee put through a line rep- 
resenting 2,500 pints of soup and por- 
tions of bread in fifty minutes, an almost 
incredible efficiency, especially when you 
remember that every card is examined 
and stamped as well as every pitiful 
pitcher and string bag filled. 

That day a woman who had not be- 
fore served on the soupes offered her 
services to the seasoned workers. They 
were grateful, but smilingly advised her 
to go home, fill her bath tub with water, 



THE "SOUPES" 23 

and ladle it out — to repeat this the fol- 
lowing day and the following, until finally 
she might return, ready to endure the 
work, and above all, not to retard the 
"Line" five unnecessary minutes! Two 
and a half years have not dulled the ten- 
derness of these women toward the 
wretched ones they serve. 

At Home 

Belgium is small. Until now I had 
been able to go and return in the same 
day. But on this particular evening I 
found myself too far south to get back. 
I was in a thickly forested, sparsely settled 
district, but I knew that farther on there 
was a great chateau belonging to the 
family of A., with numerous spare rooms. 

Tho I had been in Belgium only a 
short time I had already learned how un- 
measured is the friendship offered us, but 
I also knew that Belgian etiquette and 



24 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

convention were extremely rigorous, and 
I hesitated. 

It was thoroughly dark, when, after 
crossing a final stretch of beechwood, I 
rang the bell and sent in my card, with 
a brief line. 

After what seemed an endless time I 
saw the servant coming back through the 
great hall, followed by three women, who, 
I felt instinctively, had not come in wel- 
come. 

But there was no turning about possible 
now — some one was already speaking to 
me. Her very first words showed she 
could not in the least have understood. 
And I swiftly realized this was not sur- 
prizing since I had been there so short a 
time, and there had not before been a 
woman delegate. I explained that my 
sole excuse for sending in my stranger's 
card at that time of night was my mem- 
bership in the C. R. B. — and I uncovered 
my pin. 



THE "SOUPES" 25 

It was as if I had revealed a magic 
symbol — the door swung wide! They 
took my hands and drew me inside, over- 
whelming me with apologies, with en- 
treaties to stop with them, to stay for a 
week, or longer. They would send for 
my husband — as Director he must be 
sorely in need of a few days' rest — we 
should both rest. Their district in the 
forest had many relief centers, they would 
see that I got to them all. A room was 
all ready for me on the floor above — if I 
did not like it I should have another. I 
must have some hot tilleul at once! 

In the drawing-room I was presented 
to the other thirteen or fourteen mem- 
bers of the family, and in pages I could 
not recount their beautiful efforts, indi- 
vidually and together, to make me forget 
I had had to wait for one moment on 
their threshold. 

Still later, two American men arrived. 
They were known, and expected at any 



26 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

hour of the day or night their duties 
might bring them that way. One of them 
was ill, and not his own mother and sister 
could have been more solicitous in their 
care of him than were these kind women. 
Do Americans wonder that it hurts us, 
when we return, to have people praise 
us for what we have given Belgium? In 
our hearts we are remembering what 
Belgium has given us. 



Ill 

THE CRADLES ON THE MEUSE 

DINANT made me think of Pompeii. 
It had been one of the pleasure- 
spots of Belgium; gay, smiling, it 
stretched along the tranquil Meuse, at 
the base of granite bluffs and beech- 
covered hill-slopes. There were fac- 
tories, it is true, at either end of the 
town; but they had not marred it. Every 
year thousands of visitors, chiefly Eng- 
lish and Germans, had stopt there to for- 
get life's grimness. Dinant could make 
one forget: she was joyous, lovable, 
laughing. Before the tragedy of her 
ruins, one felt exactly as if a happy child 
had been crusht or mutilated. 

I came to Dinant in September, 191 6, 

27 



28 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

by the way of one of the two cemeteries 
where her 600, shot in August, 19 14, 
are buried. This burial-ground is on a 
sunny hill-slope overlooking rolling wheat 
fields, and the martyred lie in long rows 
at the upper corner. A few have been 
interred in their family plots, but mostly 
they are gathered in this separate place. 

Up and down I followed the narrow 
paths; the crowded plain white crosses 
with their laconic inscriptions spoke as 
no historian ever will. "Father, Hus- 
band, and Son"; "Brother and Nephew"; 
"Husband and Sons, one seventeen, and 
another nineteen"; "Brother and Father"; 
"Husband and Brother"; "Brother, Sons 
and Father"; "Father and Son"— the 
dirge of the desolation of wives and 
sisters and mothers! War that had left 
them the flame-scarred skeletons of their 
homes, had left them the corpses of their 
loved ones as well! 

Dinant was not entirely destroyed, but 



THE CRADLES ON THE MEUSE 29 

a great part of it was. A few days after 
the burning, people began to crawl back. 
They came from hiding-places in the 
hills, from near-by villages, from up and 
down the river, to take up life where they 
had left it. Human beings are most 
extraordinarily adaptable: people were 
asked where they were living; no one 
could answer exactly, but all knew that 
they were living somewhere, somehow — 
in the sheltered corner of a ruined room, 
perhaps in a cave, or beside a chimney! 
The relief committee hurried in food and 
clothing, hastily constructed a few tem- 
porary cottages; a few persons began to 
rebuild their original homes, and life 
went on. 

I was walking through a particularly 
devastated section, nothing but skeleton 
facades and ragged walls in sight, when 
suddenly from the midst of the devasta- 
tion I heard the merry laughter of chil- 
dren. I pushed ahead to look around the 



30 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

other side of a wall, and there was a most 
incredible picture. In front of a low tem- 
porary building tucked in among the ruins, 
was a series of railed-in pens for children 
to play in. And there they were romping 
riotously — fifty-two golden-haired, lovely 
babies, all under four! Along the front 
of the enclosure was a series of tall poles 
carrying gaily painted cocks and cats and 
lions. That is the Belgian touch; no re- 
lief center is too discouraging to be at 
once transformed into something cheer- 
ing, even beautiful. The babies had on 
bright pink-and-white checked aprons. I 
let myself in, and they dashed for me, 
pulling my coat, hiding in the folds of my 
skirt, deciding at once that I was a good 
horse. 

Then happened a horrible thing. One 
of the tiniest, with blue eyes and golden 
curls, ran over to me laughing and call- 
ing, "Madame, mon pere est mort!" 
"Madame, my father is dead, my father is 



THE CRADLES ON THE MEUSE 31 

dead, he was shot!" I covered my ears 
with my hands, then snatched her up and 
silenced her. There were others ready 
to call the same thing, but the nurses 
stopt them. 

The little ones went on with their romp- 
ing while I passed inside to see the equip- 
ment for caring for them. In a good- 
sized, airy room were long rows of white 
cradles, one for each child, with his or 
her name and age written on a white card 
at the top. After their play and their 
dinner they were put to sleep in these 
fresh cradles. 

They were brought by their mothers or 
friends before seven in the morning, to 
be taken care of until seven at night. 
They were bathed, their clothing was 
changed to a sort of simple uniform, and 
then they were turned loose outside to 
play, or to be amused in various ways by 
the faithful nurses. They were weighed 
regularly, examined by a physician, and 



32 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

daily given the nourishing food provided 
by the relief committee. In fact, they 
had the splendid care common to the 
1,900 creches or children's shelters in 
Belgium. But this creche was alone in 
its strange, tragic setting. 

In the midst of utter ruin are swung 
the white cradles. In front of them, un- 
der the guardianship of gay cocks and 
lions, golden-haired babies are laughing 
and romping. Further on more ruins, 
desolation, silence! 



IV 

THE LITTLE BEES" 



MADAME has charge of a 
Cantine for Enf ants Debiles (chil- 
dren below normal health) in 
one of the crowded quarters of Brussels. 
These cantines are dining-rooms where 
little ones come from the schools at 
eleven each morning for a nourishing 
meal. They form the chief department 
of the work of the "Little Bees," a society 
which is taking care of practically all the 
children, babies and older ones, in this 
city, who are in one way or another vic- 
tims of the war. And in July, 191 6, they 
numbered about 25,000. 

The cantines have been opened in every 
section of the city, in a vacant shop, a 
33 



34 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

cellar, a private home, a garage, a con- 
vent — in any available, usable place. But 
no matter how inconvenient the building, 
skilful women transform it at once into 
something clean and cheery. In the whole 
of Belgium I have never seen a run- 
down or dirty relief center. In some the 
kitchen is simply a screened-oft* corner of 
the dining-room, in others it is a separate 
and excellently equipped quarter. I 
visited one crowded cantine where every 
day the women had to carry up and down 
a narrow ladder stairway all the plates 
and food for over 470 children. But they 
have so long ago ceased to think in terms 
of "tiredness," that they are troubled by 
the question suggesting it. And these 
are the women who have been for over 
nine hundred days now — shoulder to 
shoulder with the men — ladling out one 
and one-quarter million pints of soup, and 
cooking for, and scrubbing for, and yearn- 
ing over, hundreds of thousands of more 



"THE LITTLE BEES" 35 

helpless women and children, while caring 
always for their own families at home. 
If after a long walk to the cantine (they 
have neither motors nor bicycles) madame 
finds there are not enough carrots for the 
stew, she can not telephone — she must go 
to fetch whatever ingredient she wants! 
Each cantine has its own pantry or shop 
with its precious stores of rice, beans, 
sugar, macaroni, bacon and other food- 
stuffs of the C. R. B., and in addition 
the fresh vegetables, potatoes, eggs and 
meat it solicits or buys with the money 
gathered from door to door, the gift of 
the suffering to the suffering. 

The weekly menus are a triumph of 
ingenuity; they prove what variety can 
be had in apparent uniformity ! They are 
all based on scientific analysis of food val- 
ues, and follow strictly physicians' instruc- 
tions. One day there are more grammes 
of potatoes, another more grammes 
of macaroni in the stew; one noon 



3b' WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

there is rice for dessert, the next phos- 
phatine and now a hygienic biscuit — a 
thick, wholesome one — as big as our 
American cracker. 

It was raining as I entered the large, 
modern tenement building which Madame 
had been fortunate enough to secure. I 
found on one side a group of mothers 
waiting for food to take home to their 
babies, and on the other the little office 
through which every child had to pass to 
have his ticket stamped before he could 
go upstairs to his dinner. This examin- 
ing and stamping of cards by the thou- 
sand, day after day, is in itself a most 
arduous piece of work, but women ac- 
complish it cheerfully. 

On the second floor, between two large 
connecting rooms, I found Madame, in 
white, superintending the day's prepara- 
tion of the tables for 1,662. That was 
the size of her family! Fourteen young 
women, with bees embroidered in the 




w S 
S 2 






« pq 



<£THE LITTLE BEES" 37 

Belgian colors on their white caps, were 
flying to and fro from the kitchen to the 
long counters in the hallway piled with 
plates, then to the shelves against the 
walls of the dining-room, where they de- 
posited their hundreds of slices of bread 
and saucers for dessert. Some were 
hurrying the soup plates and the 1,662 
white bowls along the tables, while others 
poured milk or went on with the bread- 
cutting. Several women were perspiring 
in the kitchens and vegetable rooms. The 
potato-peeling machine, the last proud 
acquisition which was saving them un- 
told labor, had turned out the day's kilos 
of potatoes, which were already cooked 
with meat, carrots and green vegetables 
into a thick, savory stew. The big fifty- 
quart cans were being filled to be carried 
to the dining-room; the rice dessert was 
getting its final stirring. Madame was 
darting about, watching every detail, as- 
sisting in every department. 



38 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

It was raining outside, but all was 
white, and clean, and inviting within. 
Suddenly there was a rush of feet in the 
courtyard below. I looked out the win- 
dow: in the rain 1,662 children, between 
three and fourteen years, mothers often 
leading the smaller ones — not an umbrella 
or rubber among them — were lining up 
with their cards, eager to be passed by 
the sergeant. These kind-hearted, long- 
suffering sergeants kept this wavering 
line in place, as the children noisily 
climbed the long stairway — calling, push- 
ing. One little girl stept out to put fresh 
flowers before the bust of the Queen. 
Boys and girls under six crowded into 
the first of the large, airy rooms, older 
girls into the second, while the bigger 
boys climbed to the floor above. With 
much chattering and shuffling of sabots 
they slid along the low benches to their 
places at the long, narrow tables. The 
women hurried between the wiggling 



"THE LITTLE BEES" 39 

rows, ladling out the hot, thick soup. The 
air was filled with cries of "Beaucoup, 
Mademoiselle, beaucoup!" A few even 
said "Only a little, Mademoiselle." Every- 
body said something. One tiny, golden- 
haired thing pleaded: "You know I like 
the little pieces of meat best." In no time 
they discovered that I was new, and tried 
slyly to induce me to give them extra 
slices of bread, or bowls of milk. 

In this multitude each was clamoring 
for individual attention, and for the most 
part getting it. Very little ones were 
being helped to feed themselves; second 
portions of soup were often given if 
asked for. Madame seemed to be every- 
where at once, lifting one after another 
in her arms to get a better look at eyes 
or glands. Her husband, a physician of 
international reputation, was in the little 
clinic at the end of the hall, weighing and 
examining those whose turn it was to go 
to him that day. Later he came out and 



40 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

passed up and down the rows to get an 
impression of the general condition of 
this extraordinary family. When for a 
moment husband and wife stood together 
in the middle of the vast room, they 
seemed with infinite solicitude to be 
gathering all the 1,662 in their arms — 
their own boy is at the front. And all 
the time the 1,662 were rapidly devour- 
ing their bread and soup. 

Then began the cries of "Dessert, 
Mademoiselle, dessert!" Tired arms car- 
ried the 1,662 soup plates to the kitchen, 
ladled out 1,662 portions of rice, and set 
them before eager rows. Such a final 
scraping of spoons, such fascinating play 
of voice and gesture — then the last crumb 
eaten, they crowded up to offer sticky 
hands with "Merci, Mademoiselle" and 
"Au revoir." The clatter of sabots and 
laughter died away through the court- 
yard, and the hundreds started back to 
school. 



"THE LITTLE BEES" 41 

The strong American physician, who 
had helped ladle the soup, tried to swing 
his arm back into position. I looked at 
the women who had been doing this prac- 
tically every day for seven hundred days. 
Madame was apparently not thinking of 
resting — only of the next day's ration. 

I discovered later that at four o'clock 
that afternoon she had charge of a can- 
tine for four hundred mothers and their 
new babies, and that after that she visited 
the family of a little boy who was absent, 
according to the children, because his 
shirt was being washed. 

All attempts to express admiration of 
this beautiful devotion are interrupted by 
the cry, "Oh, but it is you — it is America 
that is doing the astonishing thing — we 
must give ourselves, but you need not. 
Your gift to us is the finest expression 
of sympathy the world has known." 



42 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

II 

Before Madame . . . was made director 
of the cantine for 1,662, she had charge 
of one in a still poorer quarter of the 
city. I went to look for it on Assumption 
Day, the day of the Ascent of the Blessed 
Virgin. I knew the street, and as usual, 
the waiting line of children in front told 
the number. Scrubbed cheeks, occasional 
ribbon bows and cheap embroidery 
flounces showed the attempt of even these 
very poor mothers to celebrate their fete 
day. Throughout the city, those for- 
tunate enough to be called Mary were 
being presented with flowers, which since 
the war have been sold at extremely low 
prices, for the flowers still grow for Bel- 
gium, who supplied the markets of 
Europe before she was besieged. 

From early morning we had seen old 
and young carrying great sheaves of 
phlox and roses, or pots of hortensia, to 



"THE LITTLE BEES" 43 

some favorite Mary. But these little 
ones had no flowers, yet they were 
gay, as Belgian children invariably 
are — always ready with the swiftest 
smiles and outstretched hands, or with 
a pretty song if one asks for it. Lit- 
tle tots of three know any number of 
the interminable chansons familiar in 
France and Belgium. They chattered and 
laughed, caught my hand as I went down 
the stairs — for this dining-quarter is be- 
low the sidewalk, in rooms that are known 
as "caves." I was prepared for some- 
thing dark and cheerless, instead I found 
the whitewashed walls gay with nursery 
pictures and Belgian and American flags. 
The long tables were covered with bright 
red-and-white checked oilcloth. The small 
windows opening just above the sidewalk 
allowed sufficient light and air to keep 
everything fresh. The kitchen was im- 
maculate — shelves for shining vessels, 
others for the sacks of sugar, boxes of 



44 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

macaroni. On a table stood the inevitable 
scales — Thursday is weighing day, when 
one of the best physicians of Brussels ex- 
amines the children, recording the weights 
that form the basis for judgment as to 
the success of the ration. 

The 430 bowls of milk were already on 
the tables. Madame . . . was hurrying 
about among her helpers — twelve faith- 
ful Belgian women. They had all been 
there since eight o'clock, for this was a 
viande day (there are three a week) and 
when there is meat that must be cut into 
little pieces for between four and five 
hundred children, it means an early start. 
Two women were still stirring (with long 
wooden spoons) the great tub full of 
savory macaroni and carrots — a test in 
itself for muscle and endurance. The 
meat was' in separate kettles. The bread 
had been cut into over 400 portions. The 
phosphatine dessert (of which the chil- 
dren can not get enough) was already 



"THE LITTLE BEES" 45 

served at a side table. The "Little Bees" 
originated this phosphatine dessert, which 
is a mixture of rice, wheat and maize — 
flour, phosphate of lime and cocoa. They 
have a factory for making it, and up to 
August, 19 16, had turned out 638,000 
kilos. 

A gentleman in black frock suit and 
large hat came in to look about, and then 
went back to the lengthening line. Madame 
explained that he was the principal of the 
communal school of the quarter, and that 
he came every day to keep the children 
in order. I learned, too, that on every 
single day of the vacation, which had be- 
gun and was to continue until the middle 
of September, he and one of his teachers 
went to the school to distribute to all the 
school-children the little roll of white 
bread that they are allowed at eight- 
thirty each morning. Many of these have 
but little at home. This roll helps them 
out until the cantine meal at eleven- 



46 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

thirty, which can be had only on a phy- 
sician's authorization. From now on a 
larger meal is to be given in the schools 
— a joy not only to the pupils but to their 
teachers, who everywhere are devoting 
themselves to this work of saving their 
children. Several of the younger women 
helping Madame had been working 
wearily all the year in the professional 
schools, but as soon as their vacations 
arrived, begged to be allowed to give 
their time to the cantines. They were 
all most attractive in their white aprons 
and caps — most serious in their attention 
to the individual wants of that hungry 
family. 

A few minutes later the principal ap- 
peared again — all was ready now. Then 
the little ones began to march in. They 
came by way of an anteroom, where they 
had their hands washed, if they needed 
washing — and most of them did — and 
quite proudly held them up as they passed 



"THE LITTLE BEES' 5 47 

by us. They were of all sizes between 
three and fourteen. One pale little fel- 
low was led in by his grandmother who 
was admitted (tho no mothers or grand- 
mothers are supposed to come inside), be- 
cause he wailed the minute she left him. 
It was easy to see why mothers could not 
be allowed, tho one was glad the rule 
could be broken, and that this sad, white- 
faced grandmother could feed her own 
charge. It was terrible, too, to realize 
what that plate of savory stew would 
have meant to her, and to see that she 
touched no morsel of it. Even if there 
had been an extra portion, the women 
could not have given it to her: the fol- 
lowing day the street would have been 
filled with others, for whom there could 
not possibly be extra portions. 

If a child is too ill to come for its din- 
ner, a member of the family can carry it 
home. Practically all the cantines have 
a visiting nurse who investigates such 



48 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

cases, and keeps the number much lower 
than it would otherwise be. 

When I asked Madame how she was 
able to give so much time (from about 
8 a.m. till i or 2 p.m. every day of the 
year), she smiled and shrugged her 
shoulders : "But that is the least one can 
do, the very least! One never thinks of 
the work, it is of the children — and we 
know they love us — we see them being 
kept alive! Some of them are getting 
stronger — these weaklings. What more 
can we wish?" 



V 

MRS. WHITLOCK'S VISIT 

TJ3E second time, I visited Madame's 
cantine with the wife of the Ameri- 
can Minister, and I found what it 
meant to be the wife of the United States 
Minister in Belgium! From the corner 
above to the entrance of the court the 
street was lined with people. At the 
gateway we were met by a committee 
headed by the wife of the Bourgmestre of 
Brussels. Within the court were the 
hundreds of children — with many more 
mothers this time — all waiting ex- 
pectantly, all specially scrubbed, tho no 
amount of scrubbing could conceal their 
sad lack of shoes. There were smiles 



50 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

and greetings and little hands stretched 
out all along the line as we passed. 

Inside there was no more than the 
usual cleanliness — for the cantines are 
scrupulously kept. Madame and her as- 
sistants had tiny American flags pinned 
to their white uniforms. In the corridors 
the American and Belgian flags hung to- 
gether. A special permission had been 
obtained to take a photograph of their 
guest at the window. 

The tables were laid, the lines began 
moving. As the little girls filed in, one 
of them came forward, and with a pretty 
courtesy offered Mrs. Whitlock a large 
bouquet of red roses. The boys followed, 
and their representative, struggling with 
shyness, recited a poem as he gave his 
flowers. All the children were very much 
imprest with this simple ceremony, and 
under the two flags, as the quavering 
little voice gave thanks to "those who 
were bringing them their daily bread," 



MRS. WHITLOCK'S VISIT 51 

there were no grown-ups without tears 
in their eyes. 

American flags of one kind or another 
hang in all the cantines, along with pic- 
tures of President Wilson, mottos ex- 
pressing thanks to America, C. R. B. 
flour-sacks elaborately embroidered — on 
all sides are attempts to express gratitude 
and affection. 

That morning, as the Legation car 
turned a corner, a little old Flemish lady 
in a white frilled cap stept forward and 
clapped her hands as the American flag 
floated by. Men lift their hats to it, chil- 
dren salute it. In the shop windows one 
often sees it draping the pictures of the 
King and Queen! 

This is not a tribute to the American 
flag alone, but also to the personality of 
the man who has so splendidly represented 
this flag and to the men who carried the 
American soul and its works into Bel- 
gium through the C. R, B. Belgium will 



52 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

never forget its immediate debt to Brand 
Whitlock and to these hundreds of Ameri- 
cans whose personal service to this coun- 
try in its darkest hour is already a matter 
of history. Just as Mrs. Whitlock was 
leaving, Madame fortunately discovered 
a shabby little girl who still squeezed a 
bedraggled bunch of white roses — and 
made her happy by bringing her forward 
to present it. 

These children, as I have said, are all 
in need of special nourishment, they are 
those who have fallen by the wayside in 
the march, brought down by the stern 
repression of the food supply. One of the 
most striking effects of the war has been 
the rapid increase in tuberculosis. Many 
of the thousands in the cantines are the 
victims of "glands'' or some other dread 
form of this disease. 

However, in some respects the children 
of the very poor are better off than they 
have ever been. For the first time they 



MRS. WHITLOCK'S VISIT 53 

are receiving nourishing food at regular 
hours. And this ration, along with the 
training in hygiene and medical atten- 
tion, is having its good effect. 

One hundred and twenty-five phy- 
sicians are contributing their services to 
the "Little Bees" in Brussels alone, 
where, during the first six months of 
191 6, infant mortality had decreased 19 
per cent. It would be difficult to estimate 
the time given by physicians throughout 
the whole country, but probably half of 
the 4,700 are contributing practically all 
their time, and almost all are doing some- 
thing. It is a common sight in the late 
afternoon to see a physician who has had 
a full, hard day, rushing to a cantine to 
examine hundreds of children. Outside 
the zone of military preparation, 200,000 
sub-normal children of from three to 
seventeen years, and over 53,000 babies 
under three months, are on their "relief" 
lists, besides a large number of adults. 



54 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Outside Brussels, the cantines are con- 
ducted in much the same way as those of 
the "Little Bees." Committees of women 
everywhere are devoting themselves to 
the children. 



VI 

THE BATHTUB 

WAY over in the northeast, in 
Hasselt, a town of 17,000 in- 
habitants, there is an especially 
interesting cantine — only one of thou- 
sands in Belgium, mind you! A year 
ago, when a California professor was 
leaving San Francisco to become a C. R. 
B. representative, he was offered a fare- 
well dinner — and in the hall his hostess 
placed a basket, with obvious intent ! The 
money was not for the general fund, but 
to be spent by him personally for some 
child in need. 

He was assigned to Hasselt, for the 
Province of Limbourg, and there he very 
soon decided that a splendid young Bel- 
gian woman who had been giving her 
55 



56 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

whole time to nursing wounded soldiers 
would be the person to know which of 
their children was most in need of his 
little fund. When he proposed turning it 
over to her, she quite broke down at the 
opportunity it offered. She and her 
mother were living in a rather large 
house, but on a limited income. She 
would find the sick child and care for it 
in her own home. A few days later the 
professor called to see her "child" — and 
he found twelve! She had not been able 
to stop — most of them were children 
whose fathers were at the front. They 
were suffering from rickets, arrested de- 
velopment, paralysis, malnutrition. She 
was bathing them, feeding them, and fol- 
lowing the instructions of a physician, 
whom she had already interested. Her 
fund was two hundred and fifty dollars, 
but in her hands it seemed inexhaustible. 
She added children, one after another. 
Then, finally, the Relief Committee 



THE BATHTUB 57 

came to the support of her splendid and 
necessary work with its usual monthly 
subsidy, with which the women buy the 
supplies most needed from the relief 
shops. She is now installed in the middle 
of the town — with a kitchen and dining- 
room downstairs, and a little clinic and 
bathroom upstairs. The forty-six 
centimes (less than ten cents) a day 
which she received per child, enabled her 
to furnish an excellent meal for each. 
But she soon found that her children 
could not be built up on one meal, and 
she stretched her small subsidy to cover 
a breakfast at eight and a dinner at 
four to ioo children. She balances the 
ration, makes the daily milk tests, looks 
after every detail personally. Upstairs 
in the prized tub devoted helpers 
bathe the children who need washing, 
care for their heads, and for all the 
various ailments of a family of ioo sub- 
normal children. Because of the glycerine 



58 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

it contains, soap has been put on the "non- 
entry" list, which makes it so expensive 
that the very poor are entirely without it. 
The price has increased 300 per cent, 
since the war. Incidentally, one of the 
reasons for the high price of butter is 
that it can be sold for making soap, at an 
extraordinary figure. 

This particular tub is a tribute to the 
ingenuity of the present American repre- 
sentative — also a professor, but from 
farther East. Before the terrific problem 
of giving children enough bread and 
potatoes to keep them alive, bathrooms 
sometimes appear an unnecessary luxury. 
The relief committee could not furnish 
Mademoiselle a bathroom! But to those 
working with the sick and dirty children 
it seemed all-essential. Hasselt is not a 
rich town, everybody's resources had 
been drained — how should the money be 
found? Finally the C. R. B. delegate 
had an inspiration — there was a big 



THE BATHTUB 59 

swimming-tank in Hasselt. To the peo- 
ple, the American representative, tho 
loved, is always a more or less surprizing 
person. If it could be announced that by 
paying a small sum they could see the 
strange American swim, everybody who 
had the small sum would come — he would 
swim for the bathroom! It was an- 
nounced, and they came, and that swim- 
ming fete will go down in the annals of 
the town! The cantine got its bath- 
room, and there was enough left over to 
buy a very necessary baby-scales. 

Mademoiselle took us to the houses 
where we saw the misery of mothers left 
with seven, nine, eleven children, in one 
or two little rooms. There was no wage- 
earner — he was at the front; or there 
was no work. One woman was crying as 
we went in. She explained that her son, 
"a bad one," had just been trying to take 
his father's boots. She pulled out from 
behind the basket where the twins were 



60 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

sleeping under the day's washing, a bat- 
tered pair of coarse, high boots. There 
were holes in the hob-nailed soles, there 
was practically no heel left. The heavy 
tops still testified to an original stout 
leather, but never could one see a more 
miserable, run-down-at-the-heel, leaky, 
and useless pair of boots. Yet to that 
woman they represented a fortune — 
there is practically no leather left in the 
country, and if there were, how could her 
man, when he came back, have the money 
to buy another pair, and how could he 
work in the fields without his boots? 
There were eight children — eight had 
died. 

And she wept bitterly because of the 
son who had tried to take his father's 
boots, as she hid them behind the twin's 
basket. I had heard of the sword as the 
symbol of the honor and power of the 
house; in bitter reality it is the father's 
one pair of boots! 



I 



VII 

THE BREAD IN THE HAND 

SOON came to have the curious 
feeling about the silent stone fronts 
of the houses that if I could but 
look through them I should see women 
sorting garments, women making pat- 
terns for lace, women ladling soup, paint- 
ing toys, washing babies. Up and down 
the stairs of these inconvenient buildings 
they are running all day long, back and 
forth, day after day, seeking through a 
heroic cheerfulness, a courageous smile, 
to hold back tears. 

And chiefly I was overwhelmed by the 
enormous quantities of food they are 
handling. The whole city seems turned 
into a kitchen — and there follows the in- 

61 



62 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

evitable question: "Where does it all 
come from?" The women who are doing 
the work connect directly with the local 
Belgian organizations, by the great sys- 
tem of decentralization, which is the key- 
note of the C. R. B. Just these three 
magic letters spell the answer to the in- 
evitable question. 

At the C. R. B. bureau I had seen 
the charts lining the corridors. They 
seemed alive, changing every day, mark- 
ing the ships on the ocean, the number of 
tons of rice, wheat, maize or sugar ex- 
pected; and how these tons count up! In 
the two years that have passed, 1,000,000 
tons each year, meaning practically one 
ship every weekday in the month; 90,000 
tons at one time on the Atlantic! Other 
charts show the transit of goods already 
unloaded at Rotterdam. Over 200 
lighters are in constant movement on 
their way down the canals to the various 
C. R. B. warehouses, which means about 



THE BREAD IN THE HAND 63 

50,000 tons afloat all the time. I had 
seen, too, the reports of the enormous 
quantities of clothing brought in — 
4,000,000 dollars worth, almost all of it 
the free gift of the United States. 

In the director's room were other maps 
showing the territory in charge of each 
American. Back of every cantine and its 
power to work stands this American, the 
living guaranty to England that the 
Germans are not getting the food, the 
guaranty to Germany of an equal neutral- 
ity, and to the Belgians themselves the 
guaranty that the gifts of the world to 
her, and those of herself to her own peo- 
ple, would be brought in as wheat through 
the steel ring that had cut her off. One 
had only to think of the C. R. B. door in 
the steel ring as closed, to realize the posi- 
tion of this neutral commission. The 
total result of their daily and hourly co- 
ordination of all this organization inside 
Belgium, their solitude for each class of 



64 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

the population, their dull and dry calcula- 
tions of protein, fat and carbohydrates, 
bills of lading, cars, canal boats, mills and 
what not, is the replenishing of the life- 
stream of a nation's blood. 

Thus, the food dispensed by the women 
is part of the constantly entering mass, 
and between its purchase, or its receipt as 
gift by the C. R. B., and its appearance 
as soup for adults, or pudding for chil- 
dren, is the whole intricate structure of 
the relief organization. The audible 
music of this creation is the clatter of 
hundreds of typewriters, the tooting of 
tugs and shrieks of locomotives, but the 
undertones are the harmonies of devo- 
tion. 

Everybody who can pay for his food 
must do so — it is sold at a fair profit, and 
it is this profit, gained from those who 
still have money, that goes over to the 
women in charge of the cantines for the 
purchase of supplies for the destitute. 



THE BREAD IN THE HAND 65 

They often supplement this subsidy 
through a house-to-house appeal to the 
people. For instance, in Brussels, the 
"Little Bees" are untiring in their can- 
vass. Basket on arm, continually they 
solicit an egg, a bunch of carrots, a bit 
of meat, or a money gift. They have 
been able to count on about 5,000 eggs 
and about 2,500 francs a week, besides 
various other things. Naturally, the peo- 
ple in the poorer sections can contribute 
but small amounts, but it is here that one 
finds the most touching examples of 
generosity — the old story of those who 
have suffered and understood. One 
woman who earns just a franc a day and 
on it has to support herself and her 
family, carefully wraps her weekly two- 
centime piece (two-fifths of a cent) and 
has it ready when one of the "Little 
Bees" calls for it. 



66 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Our American Young Men 

Monsieur . . . , a committee leader in the 
Hainaut, once said to me, "Madame, one 
of the big things Belgium will win in this 
war is a true appreciation of the charac- 
ter and capacity (quite aside from their 
idealism) of American young men. 

"I'D confess," he continued, "that when 
that initial group of young Americans 
came rushing in with those first heaven- 
sent cargoes of wheat, we were not 
strongly reassured. We knew that for 
the moment we were saved, but it was 
difficult to see how these youths, however 
zealous and clear-eyed, were going to 
meet the disaster as we knew it. 

"We organized, as you know, our local 
committees, and headed them by our Bel- 
gians of widest experience; our lawyers 
of fifty or sixty, our bankers, our leaders 
of industry. We could set all the machin- 
ery, but nothing would work unless the 



THE BREAD IN THE HAND 67 

Americans would stand with us. The in- 
structions read : 'The American and your 
Belgian chairmen will jointly manage the 
relief/ 

"And who came to stand with us? 
Who came to stand with me, for instance ? 
You see/' and he pointed to splendid 
broad-shouldered C. ahead of us, "that 
lad — not a day over twenty-eight — just 
about the age of my boys in the trenches, 
and who, heaven knows, is now almost as 
dear to us as they! 

"But in the beginning I couldn't see it; 
I simply couldn't believe C. was going to 
be able to handle his end of our terrific 
problem. But day by day I watched this 
lad quietly getting a sense of the situa- 
tion, then plunging into it, getting under 
it, developing an instinct for diplomacy 
along with his natural genius for direct- 
ness and practicality that bewildered me. 
It has amazed us all. 

"We soon learned that we need not 



68 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

fear to trust ourselves to that type of 
character, to its adaptability and capacity, 
no matter how young it seemed." 

Of course there have been older Ameri- 
cans who have brought to their Belgian 
co-workers equal years as well as experi- 
ence, but one of the pictures I like best to 
remember is this of Monsieur . . ., a 
Belgian of fifty-five or sixty, in counsel 
with his eager American delegue of 
twenty-eight. To the partnership, friend- 
ship, confidence, the Belgian added some- 
thing paternal, and the American re- 
sponded with a devotion one feels is life- 
long. 

Between the visits to mills and docks, 
and the grinding over accounts, orders 
of canal boats and warehouses, there are 
hours for other things. I remember one 
restful one spent at this same Monsieur's 
table — he is an excellent Latin scholar 
and a wise philosopher — when he and 
his young American friend for a time 



THE BREAD IN THE HAND 69 

forgot the wheat and fat in their de- 
light to get back to Virgil and Horace. 

Young D., a Yale graduate, furnished 
another example of these qualities Mon- 
sieur stressed. If he had been a West- 
erner, his particular achievement would 
have been less surprizing, but he came 
from the East. 

He reached Belgium at the time of a 
milk crisis. We were attempting, and, in 
fact, had practically arranged, the plan 
to establish C. R. B. herds adjacent to 
towns, to insure a positive supply for tiny 
babies. The local committees went at it, 
but one after another came in with dis- 
couraging reports. Even their own peo- 
ple were often preventing success by fear- 
ing and sometimes by flatly refusing to 
turn their precious cows into a community 
herd. Then one day D., who, so far as I 
know, had never in his career been within 
speaking distance of a cow, put on some- 
thing that looked like a sombrero and 



70 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

swung out across his province. We had 
hardly had time to speculate about what 
he might accomplish, before he returned 
to announce that he had rounded up a 
magnificent herd, and that his district was 
ready to guarantee so much pure milk 
from that time on! 

"What had he done, where we had 
failed ?" asked Monsieur. "He had called 
a meeting of farmers in each commune, 
and said : 'We, the Americans, want from 
this commune five or ten cows for the 
babies of your cities. We give ourselves 
to Belgium, you give your cows to us. 
We will give them back when the war is 
over — if they are alive!' And he got 
them!" They would have given this 
cheerful beggar anything — these stolid 
old Flemish peasants. 



VIII 

ONE WOMAN 

THE world will be incredulous when 
it is given the final picture of the 
complexity and completeness of 
the Belgian Relief Organization. In all 
the communes, all the provinces, in the 
capital, for over two years, groups of Bel- 
gians have been shut in their bureaux 
with figures and plans, matching needs 
with relief. 

There must be bread and clothing for 
everybody, shelter for the homeless, soup 
for the hungry, food boxes for prisoners 
in Germany, milk for babies, special 
nourishment for the tubercular, orphan- 
ages and creches for the tiny war victims, 
work for the idle, some means of secours 
n 



73 ( WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

for merchants, artists, teachers and 
thousands of "ashamed poor" — 665,000 
idle workmen with their 1,000,000 de- 
pendents, 1,250,000 on the soupes, 53,000 
babies and 200,000 children under normal 
health in the cantines — how much of the 
story can these figures tell ? 

Yet the efforts of the organization have 
been so continuous and comprehensive, 
the C. R. B. has been so steadily bringing 
to them the vital foodstuffs, and holding 
for them the guaranty of their freedom 
to act, that from the committee-rooms it 
has sometimes seemed as if there were 
really nothing more to be done for Bel- 
gium! 

But one has only to spend a few days 
at the other end, to get quickly disabused 
of this idea! No amount of organization 
can truly meet the needs of the seven and 
a half million people of a small industrial 
country, suddenly and entirely cut off 
from all normal contact with the rest of 



ONE WOMAN 78 

the world. Despite all the food that has 
been distributed, the resistance of the peo- 
ple has been lowered. Tuberculosis has 
seized its opportunity, and is making 
rapid strides. I have visited home after 
home where a heartbreaking courage was 
trying to cover up a losing struggle. Over 
and above all the organized "Relief," 
there remains an enormous task for just 
such splendid women as Madame . . . 

Madame is the wife of a lawyer, with 
two sons at the front. As soon as the 
war broke out she organized a Red Cross 
center. Then the refugees came pouring 
into Brussels, and she felt that among 
them there must be many to whom it 
would be torture to be crowded into the 
big relief shelters. She said little, but 
by the end of August she had managed to 
squeeze five families in with her own. 
From the day the Germans abolished the 
Belgian Red Cross she gave her entire 
time to helping the homeless who had 



74 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

been in comfortable circumstances before 
the war to some quiet corner where they 
might wait its end. There was never any 
announcement of her work, but the word 
spread like wildfire — many had to be 
turned away daily. Then she found a 
big home on the Boulevard, rather shabby 
inside, but conveniently arranged for 
suites of two or even three rooms. Here 
a considerable number of families might 
have space for a complete menage; plenty 
of light and air, and room to cook and 
sleep. Before long she was housing 
ninety-eight, but a few of these were able 
to re-establish themselves, so when I 
visited her in September, 191 6, there were 
sixty-five. As her own funds were 
limited, and fast disappearing, she had 
in the end to appeal to the "Relief" to 
subsidize this "Home." 

On the first floor she had a little pantry- 
shop, where each family received the per- 
mitted ration of bread, sugar, bacon and 



ONE WOMAN 75 

other foodstuffs. One day a woman came 
to her, hungry. She was a widow with 
two little girls, who, before the war, had 
earned a good salary in the post-office. 
Somehow she had managed to exist for 
two years, but now there was nothing left. 
She was given charge of the pantry at 
ten cents a day. I have seen many pro- 
cessions of people descending long stair- 
ways. I shall forget them. But I shall 
never forget this one of the refugees 
from the upper floors winding down the 
stairways at the shop hour, with their 
pathetic plates and bowls ready for the 
bacon and bread that made living possible. 
They could, perhaps, add vegetables and 
fruit, or an egg or two, to the ration to 
piece out the meal. On the lowest shelf 
of this miniature shop were a few dozen 
cans of American corn, which even yet 
the people have not learned to like. Hav- 
ing been brought up to regard corn in 
all forms as fit only for cattle and 



76 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

chickens, even disaster can not convince 
them that it is a proper food for man ! 

Later we went upstairs to visit some 
of the apartments. They were bright and 
clean, with cheery flower-pots on all the 
window-sills. Every one showed a fine 
appreciation of what was done for him 
by making the most of all he had; an at- 
titude quite different from that of many 
less used to comfort, less intelligent, who 
neither hesitate to demand charity, nor to 
complain of what they receive. Each 
family had a small, practical stove, which 
served for both cooking and heating. 

One family of eight was content in its 
two rooms. They had had a copper shop 
and a pension at Dinant; were very com- 
fortably off, when, suddenly, Dinant was 
struck. All their property was in flames, 
men were being shot, their own grand- 
mother, eighty-one years old, had her leg 
broken, and, terror-stricken, they fled with 
her up and down hill, over rocks and 



ONE WOMAN 7T 

through brush till they reached Namur, 
and finally arrived at Brussels where they 
heard of Madame's "Home." The grand- 
mother, whose leg is mended but still 
crooked, was sitting in front of the red 
geraniums at a window, knitting socks. 
She knits one pair a week and receives five 
cents for each pair from the clothing com- 
mittee. The young girls help Madame in 
various ways; the father tries to work in 
copper, but if he earns fifty cents a week, 
considers himself lucky. The particular 
struggle for this family is to get eggs 
for the grandmother, who can not get 
along on the bacon and bread. Eggs cost 
ten cents each. Happily, this is a kind of 
situation that "special funds" from the 
United States have often relieved. Every- 
body was courageous, trying simply to 
hold on till the terrible war should be 
ended and he could go back to rebuild 
something on the ruins of his home. 
There was another Dinant menage next 



78 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

door, but a menage for one. I quickly 
read this poor woman's story on the walls. 
On one was tacked a large picture of 
Dinant, beautiful, smiling, winding along 
the river, as in July, 19 14. Above it was 
the photograph of her husband, shot in 
August; on the other wall a handsome 
son in uniform. He was at the front. 
She stopt peeling her potatoes to go over 
again those horrible days. They had 
been so well off, so happy, father, mother 
and son. When they saw their city in 
flames, they were too bewildered, too 
terror-stricken to realize what it meant. 
Her husband left to help restore a bridge 
— he did not return. The son hurried to 
follow his King; she somehow reached 
Brussels. 

There was a fine young chap of about 
fifteen, whose father had been killed at 
Manceau sur Sambre. He and his mother 
had found this haven, but now she was in 
the hospital undergoing a capital opera- 



ONE WOMAN 79 

tion. Madame was trying to arrange a 
special diet for her on her return. They 
had been in very comfortable circum- 
stances; now everything was gone. 

And so it was — the same story, and 
from all parts of Belgium. They had 
come from Verviers, Aerschot, Dinant, 
from Termonde and Ypres — the striking 
thing was the courage, the gentleness, the 
fine spirit of all. 

This "Home," as I said, has now been 
subsidized, but along with it Madame still 
carries on another admirable work en- 
tirely on her own responsibility. Some 
friends help her, but she really lives from 
day to day! On the ground floor of this 
same building she has a restaurant, also 
known only as the word passes from 
mouth to mouth, where any one may 
come for a good dinner at noon. There 
is no limit to what one may pay, but the 
charge is a franc, or twenty cents. The 
majority pay less. 



80 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

It has quite the atmosphere of one of 
the little Paris restaurants of the Latin 
quarter — two adjoining rooms bright with 
flowers and colored cloths and gay china, 
separated from the kitchen only by 
screens. It is frequented chiefly by 
artists and teachers, some young girls 
from the shops, and a few business men, 
Madame does not go from table to table 
as the Paris host does, greeting his guests, 
but they come to her table to shake hands 
and chat for a minute. They linger over 
their coffee — there is the general atmos- 
phere of cheer and bien etre. And what 
this means in this time of gloom to the 
sixty or more who gather there daily ! 

Young girls of the families of the refu- 
gees serve the meals. The cook, herself 
a refugee, works for twenty francs a 
month. 

I said any one might come, but that is, 
of course, not exact. Any one may ask 
to come, but he must prove to Madame 



ONE WOMAN 81 

that he needs to come. After he explains 
his situation, she has ways of checking up 
this information and deciding herself 
whether the need is a real one. The din- 
ner consists of soup, a meat and vegeta- 
ble dish, and dessert, with beer or coffee. 
I was looking over the meal tickets and 
noticed that while most of them were 
unstamped (the one franc ones) a good 
number had distinguishing marks. Then 
I learned that if a person was unable to 
pay a franc for this meal, he might have 
it for fifteen or even ten cents, and his 
ticket was stamped accordingly. I found 
one ticket with no stamp, but with the 
"o" of "No" blotted out. This might 
be chance, but after finding a half-dozen 
or more with this same ink blot, I sus- 
pected a meaning. And the explanation 
revealed the spirit of Madame's work. 
"Yes," she said, "there is a meaning. 
There are some so badly off that they can 
pay nothing; to save them the pain of 



82 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

having to look at, and to have others look 
at, a stamp registering this misery, I do 
not stamp their tickets, but, since I must 
keep count, I blot that little 'o/ which 
at once suggests 'zero' to me!" 

Choosing at random, I found regis- 
tered for one day in July, 1916: 
1 dinner at 1 franc, 10 centimes. 

58 dinners at 1 franc. 

43 dinners at 75 centimes (15 cents). 

10 dinners at 50 centimes. 
4 dinners at O. 



IX 

THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 

UNQUESTIONABLY the Belgian 
above all others the Germans would 
rid themselves of if they could, is 
Cardinal Mercier. He is the exalted 
Prince of the Church, but in the hour of 
decision, he stept swiftly down and, with 
a ringing call to courage, took his place 
with the people. Ever since that day he 
has helped them to stand united, defiant, 
waiting the day of liberation. Others 
have been silenced by imprisonment or 
death, but the greatest power has not 
dared to lay hands on the Cardinal. He 
is the voice, not only of the Church, but 
of Belgium heartening her children. 
Malines has her cantines and soupes 

83 



84 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

and ouvroirs, all the branches of secours 
necessary to a city that was one of the 
centers of attack; but these are not the 
most interesting things about Malines. 
It is above all as the city of the Cardinal 
that she stands forth in this war. Her 
"ceuvre" has been to give moral and 
spiritual secours, not only to her own 
people, but to those of every part of Bel- 
gium. 

Since under the "occupation" the press 
has naturally been "controlled," this 
secours has been distributed chiefly 
through the famous letters of the Car- 
dinal sent to priests to be re-read to their 
people. We remember the thrill with 
which the first one was read in America. 
After the war there will be pilgrimages 
to the little room where it was printed. 
I had the privilege of having it shown me 
by that friend of the Cardinal who was 
the printer of the first letter, and whose 
brother was at this time a prisoner in 



THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 85 

Germany for having printed the second. 
The room was much as it had been left 
after the search; books were still disar- 
ranged on their shelves, papers and 
pamphlets heaped in confusion on the 
tables. The red seals with which the 
Germans had closed the keyholes had 
been broken, but their edges still re- 
mained. Standing in the midst of the 
disarray, remembering that the owner 
had already been six months in a German 
prison, and looking out on the shattered 
f aqade at the end of the garden, I realized, 
at least partly, another moment of the 
war. 

This quickening secours, then, is dis- 
tributed chiefly by letter, but continually 
by presence and speech in Malines itself, 
and occasionally in other parts of the 
country. On the 21st of July, 1916, the 
anniversary of the independence of Bel- 
gium, all Brussels knew that the Cardinal 
was coming to celebrate high mass in 



86 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Sainte Gudule. The mass was to begin 
at II o'clock, but at 9.30 practically every 
foot of standing-room in the vast cathe- 
dral was taken. In the dimness a great 
sea of people waited patiently, silently, 
the arrival of their leader. Occasionally 
a whispered question or rumor flashed 
along the nave. "He has come!" "He 
has been prevented I" There was a tacit 
understanding that there should be no 
demonstration — the Cardinal himself had 
ordered it. Every one was trying to con- 
trol himself, and yet, as the air grew 
thicker, and others fought their way into 
the already packed transepts, one felt that 
anything might happen! Almost every 
person had a bit of green ribbon (color 
of hope) or an ivy leaf (symbol of en- 
durance) pinned to his coat. The wear- 
ing of the national colors was strictly for- 
bidden, but the national spirit found 
another way: green swiftly replaced the 
orange, black and red. 



THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 87 

We all knew that this meant trouble 
for Brussels, and the fact that the shops 
(which had all been ordered to keep open 
this holiday) were carrying on a con- 
tinuous comedy at the expense of the 
Germans, did not help matters. Their 
doors were open, to be sure, but in many, 
the passage was blocked by the five or 
six employees who sat in stiff rows with 
bows of green ribbon in their buttonholes, 
and indescribable expressions on their 
faces. In the biggest chocolate shop, the 
window display was an old pail of dirty 
water with a slimsy rag thrown near it. 
There was no person inside but the owner, 
who stood beside the cash register in 
dramatic and defiant attitude, smoking a 
pipe. There were crowds in front of the 
window which displayed large photo- 
graphs of the King and Queen, draped 
with the American flag. Another shop 
had only an enormous green bow in the 
window. Almost every one took some 



88 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

part in the play. Not a Belgian entered 
a shop, and if a German was brave enough 
to, he was usually made the victim of his 
courage. One was delighted to serve 
him, but, unfortunately, peaches had ad- 
vanced to ten francs each, or something 
of the sort! 

Finally, after an hour and a half, a 
priest made an announcement, which 
from our distance we misunderstood. We 
thought he said that the mass would be 
celebrated, but unfortunately not by 
Monseigneur, who had been detained. A 
few of us worked our way, inch by inch, 
to the transept door, and out into the 
street. There I found an excited group 
running around the rear of the cathedral 
to the sacristy-door, and, when I reached 
it, I learned the Cardinal had just passed 
through. 

For no particular reason I waited there, 
and before long the door was partly 
opened by an acolyte, who was apparently 



THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 89 

expecting some one. He saw me and 
agreed that I might enter if I wished, for 
was I not an American to whom all 
Belgium is open? So I slipt in and 
found room to stand just behind the altar 
screen where all through the celebration 
I could watch the face of the Cardinal — 
a face at once keen and tender, strong, 
fearless, devout: one could read it all 
there. He was tall, thin, dominating, a 
heroic figure, in his gorgeous scarlet vest- 
ments, officiating at the altar of this 
beautiful Gothic cathedral. 

The congregation remained silent, three 
or four fainting women were carried out, 
that was all. Then the Cardinal mounted 
the pulpit at the further end of the nave to 
deliver his message, the same message he 
had been preaching for two years — they 
must hold themselves courageous, uncon- 
quered, with stedfast faith in God and in 
their final liberation. Tears were in the 
eyes of many, but there was no crying out. 



90 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

From the pulpit he came back to the 
catafalque erected in the middle of the 
nave for the Belgian soldiers dead in 
battle. It represented a great raised 
coffin, simply and beautifully draped with 
Belgian flags, veiled in crepe. Tall, flam- 
ing candles surrounded it. As the Car- 
dinal approached, the dignitaries of the 
city, who had been occupying seats of 
honor below the altar, marched solemnly 
down and formed a circle about the 
catafalque. Then the Cardinal read the 
service for the dead. The dim light of 
the cathedral, the sea of silent people, the 
memorial coffin under the flag and lighted 
by tall candles, the circle of those chosen 
to represent the city, the sad-faced Cardi- 
nal saying the prayers for those who had 
died in defense of the flag that now 
covered them — was it strange that as his 
voice ceased and he moved slowly toward 
the sacristy-door by which he was to de- 
part, the overwhelming tide of emo- 



THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 91 

tion swept barriers, and "Vive le Roil" 
"Vive Monseigneur !" echoed once more 
from these ancient walls! We held our 
breath. Men were pressing by me 
whispering, "What shall we do? We 
have necessity to cry out — after two 
years, we must cry out!" The Cardinal 
went straight forward, looking neither to 
the right nor the left, the tears streaming 
down his cheeks. 

Outside, to pass from the rear of the 
cathedral to the Archbishop's palace, he 
was obliged to cross the road. As I 
turned up this road to go back to the 
main portal, the crowd came surging 
down, arms outthrust, running, waving 
handkerchiefs and canes, pushing aside 
the few helpless Belgian police, quite be- 
yond control, and shouting wildly now, 
"Vive le Roi !" and "Vive Monseigneur !" 
I was able to struggle free only after the 
gate had closed on the Cardinal. 

This was the day when in times of 



92 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

peace all the populace brought wreaths 
to the foot of the statue erected in honor 
of the soldiers who died for the inde- 
pendence of Belgium. The Germans had 
placed guards in the square and for- 
bidden any one to go near it. So all day 
long throngs of people, a constant, steady 
procession marched along the street 
beyond, each man lifting his hat, women 
often their green parasols, as soon as 
they came in view of their statue. All 
these things, I repeat, did not help Brus- 
sels in the matter of the demonstration at 
the cathedral. And a few days later a 
posted notice informed her that she had 
been fined 1,000,000 marks! 

But the people had seen their Cardinal 
— they had received their spiritual 
secours — he had brought heavenly com- 
fort to their hearts, put new iron in their 
blood. They had dared to cry just once 
their loyalty to him and to their King, 
and they laughed at the 1 ,000,000 marks ! 



X 



THE TEACHERS 

ONE afternoon I happened by a 
communal school in another 
crowded quarter of Brussels, and, 
tho it was vacation, and I knew the prin- 
cipal had been sadly overworked for two 
years and ought to be in the country, I 
decided to knock at the bureau to see if 
he were in. 

I had my answer in the corridor, where 
rows of unhappy mothers and miserable 
fathers were waiting to see him. Inside 
there were more. He was examining a 
little girl with a very bad eye; and I 
realized why there could be no vacation 
for the principal! 

As I sat there, I heard the noise of 

93 



94 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

marching in the court below, and when I 
asked what it was, he opened the window 
for me to see. There were 720 children 
between six and fourteen years, gaily 
tramping round and round under the 
trees, making their "promenade" before 
the 4 o'clock "repas scolaire" (school 
children's repast) which the Relief Or- 
ganization is now trying to furnish to 
each of the 1,200,000 children in the free 
schools of Belgium who may need it — 
incidentally at an outlay of $2,500,000 a 
month. 

Over 8,500 children in the sixty com- 
munal schools of Brussels proper receive 
this dinner. It is quite distinct from the 
eleven o'clock meal furnished at the can- 
tines for children below normal health — 
they may have both — and it is served in 
the school building. Naturally the school- 
teachers are carrying a large share in 
this stupendous undertaking. 

For the children, the "repas" is the 



THE TEACHERS 05 

great event of the day, and, since the 
vacation, they gather long before the 
hour. One sees, too, hundreds of little 
ones on the sidewalks before the Enfants 
Debiles dining-rooms, as early as 8 a.m., 
clutching their precious cards and waiting 
already for their eleven o'clock potatoes 
and phosphatine. 

This school is also a communal soup 
center, tho the teachers have nothing to 
do with the distribution. Every day 
from 2,500 to 3,000 men and women line 
up — worn, white enamel pitchers in one 
hand, cards in the other, to receive the 
family ration of soup and bread. 

As I passed one morning, I saw a little 
bare-legged girl sitting on a doorstep op- 
posite. Her mother had evidently left 
her to guard their portion, and she sat 
huddled up against the tall, battered 
pitcher full of steaming soup, her little 
arms tight about four round loaves — 
which meant many brothers and sisters. 



96 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

The father was in the trenches. She sat 
there, a slim, wistful little thing, guard- 
ing the soup and bread, the picture of 
what war means to women and children. 

Monsieur was particularly happy be- 
cause he had just succeeded in sending 
fifteen children, who very much needed to 
be built up, to the seacoast for fifteen 
days. It is his hope to establish homes, 
in the country so far as possible, which 
shall be limited to from thirty to forty 
children. 

He has continually to arrange, too, for 
the care of those who may not be in truth 
orphans, but who belong to the thousands 
of wretched little ones set adrift by the 
war. I saw one little boy who had been 
found all alone in a most pitiful plight 
beside a gun, in one of the devastated dis- 
tricts. If his parents are still living, no 
one has yet succeeded in tracing them. 

That morning an old uncle had begged 
Monsieur to take charge of his nephew 



THE TEACHERS 97 

and niece; he had not a penny left, they 
must starve unless something were done 
for them. Some months before, the father 
had been wounded at the front, and the 
mother had foolishly hurried away to try 
to reach him, leaving the children with 
her brother. Months had gone by — he 
had had no word from any one — and 
now he was quite at the end of his re- 
sources. And so it was with case after 
case. Something must be done! 

Besides being the section kitchen and 
dining-room, this school has become a 
social center. Every Sunday afternoon 
the children are invited to gather there 
to have a good time. They are taught to 
play games, each is given a bonbon, a 
simple sweet of some sort — "nothing of 
the kind to encourage luxury!" They 
are occupied, happy, and kept off the 
streets and out of homes made miserable 
through lack of employment. 

We see, then, that "every day" means 



98 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

literally every day, and we realize how 
arduous is the task of the thousands of 
devoted teachers who are standing be- 
tween the war and those who would other- 
wise be its victims. 

And as they tell us over and over again 
that the one thing that makes them able 
to stand is their confidence in the love 
and sympathy of the United States, we 
begin to realize our responsibility. It 
is not only that the wheat and cloth 
are essential, the encouragement of 
the presence of even the few (forty 
to fifty) Americans is the great ne- 
cessity ! 

At 8.30 the next morning I visited one 
of the "J arcn ns d'Enfants" — schools for 
children between two and a half and six 
years of age. There were the teachers 
already busy in that new department of 
their work — the war-food department; 
460 tiny tots were being given their first 
meal of the day — a cup of hot cocoa, and, 



THE TEACHERS 99 

during that month, a little white bread 
bun. No American can understand what 
this single piece of white bread means to 
a French or Belgian child. I am sure 
that if a tempting course dinner were set 
at one side, and a slice of white bread at 
the other, he would not hesitate to choose 
the bread. It is white bread that they all 
beg for, tho the brown war bread made 
from flour milled at 82 per cent, is really 
very palatable, and superior to the war 
bread of other countries. 

A sheaf of letters sent from a school in 
Lille to thank the C. R. B. director for 
the improved brown (not nearly white) 
bread gave me my first impression of the 
all-importance of the color and quality of 
the bread. 

Amelie B. wrote: 

"Before May 5, 1915, we had to eat 
black bread, which we preferred to make 
into flowers of all sorts as souvenirs of 
the war! But after that date we have 



100 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

had the good, light bread — so eatable. 
It is for this we thank you." 

Another says: 

"Since we have had the good bread the 
happiest people are the mothers, who be- 
fore had to let their "chers petits" suffer 
from hunger, because their delicate 
stomachs would not digest the bad, black 
bread." 

Further : 

"The mothers of little children wept 
with joy and blest you, as they went to 
get their good, light bread." 

One little girl wrote: 

"When on the 5th of May, 191 5, 
maman returned with the new bread, 
and we all ran to taste it, we found it 
good. The bread we had been eating 
long months had been dark and moist. 
Further, rice had been our daily food. It 
is without doubt to show your gratitude 
to the French, who went to drive the 
English away from you in 1783, that you 



THE TEACHERS 101 

have thought to soften our suffering. 
Merci! Merci! Many died because of 
that bad bread, and many more should 
have died, had you not come to our aid 
with the good bread." 

Another little girl writes: 

"If ever in the future America is in 
need, France will not forget the good she 
has done and will reach a hospitable hand 
to her second country, who has saved her 
unhappy children. It is you who have 
made it possible for all mothers to give 
bread to their children. Without the rice 
and beans, what would have become of 
us ! You have helped us to have coal and 
warm clothing against the cold. In the 
name of all the mothers we thank you, 
and all the little children send you a great 
kiss of thanks." 

The babies had all finished their cocoa 
and buns, so I went to the Girls' Tech- 
nical Training School in the neighbor- 
hood. It was having a particularly hard 



102 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

time because of the lack of materials and 
of opportunity to sell the articles made 
by the children. But two wonderful 
women — one the director, the other the 
art teacher — were courageously fighting 
to keep things going. 

The pupils are largely from poor fami- 
lies. When they were going through the 
beautiful figures of their gymnasium ex- 
ercise for me, I saw that the bloomers 
were mostly made of odds and ends of 
cloth. The shoes, too, quickly told the 
tale — all sorts of substitutes for leather, 
patched woolen shoes or slippers, wooden 
soles with cloth tops, clogs. 

In the room for design I was greeted 
with most cordial smiles as Madame in- 
troduced me as her friend from America, 
the country which meant hope to them. 
Then happened swiftly one of the things 
it is difficult to prevent — the shouting in 
one breath of "Vive le Roi!" and "Vive 
rAmerique!" Who would doubt that a 



THE TEACHERS 103 

good part of the joy of shouting "Vive 
FAmerique" comes from the opportunity- 
it gives them to couple with it the cry of 
their hearts, "Vive la Belgique!" 

By the time we returned to her bureau, 
Madame trusted me entirely, and ex- 
plained that this was the center of a kind 
of "Assistance Discrete" she had estab- 
lished for her girls and their families. She 
opened several cabinets, and showed me 
what they had made to help one another. 
Certain women have been contributing 
materials — old garments, bits of cloth, 
trimming for hats, all of which have been 
employed to extraordinary advantage. 
What struck me most were the attractive 
little babies' shirts, made from the upper 
parts of worn stockings. 

Madame opened a paper sack and 
showed me nine hard-boiled eggs that 
were to be given to the weaker girls, who 
most needed extra nourishment that day. 

Her most precious possession was a 



104 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

record of the gifts of the pupils and their 
friends for this "Assistance Discrete." It 
is a list of contributions of a few centimes, 
or a franc or two, given as thank offer- 
ings for some blessing; oftenest for re- 
covery from illness, or for good news re- 
ceived. It showed, too, that the children 
had been bringing all the potato peelings 
from home, to be sold as food for cattle. 
Sometimes a girl brought as much as 
twenty-eight centimes (over five cents) 
worth of peelings. But in May, 1916, 
the potato peelings stopt — they were not 
having potatoes at home. 



XI 

GABRIELLE'S BABY 

BEFORE the war Madame was very 
close to the Queen. She lived in 
our quarter of Brussels ; we became 
friends. And how generous the friend- 
ship between a Belgian and an American 
can be, only the members of the Commis- 
sion for Relief truly know! It is swift 
and complete. 

I had been in Brussels five months 
when she said to me one day: 

"My dear, I understand only too well 
the difficulties of your position — the 
guaranty you gave on entering. As 
you know, I have never once suggested 
that you carry a note for me, or bring a 
message — tho I have seen you starting in 
your car behind your blessed little white 

105 



106 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

flag for the city of my daughter and my 
grandchildren ! Nor have I," she laughed, 
with the swift play so typical of the Bel- 
gian mind, "once hinted at a pound of 
butter or a potato! But lately I have 
been suffering so many, many fears, that 
I am tempted just to ask if you think this 
would be wrong for you — if it would, 
forget that I asked it: I have a relation 
who has always been closer to me than a 
brother — we were brought up together. 
He is eighty-two now, and, at the begin- 
ning of the war, was living near X in 
Occupied France. He was important in 
his district, his name is known. Now, if 
I should merely give you that name, and, 
when you next see your American dele- 
gate from that district, you should speak 
it, might it not be possible that he would 
recognize it, and could tell you if my dear, 
dear M. is suffering, or if he is yet able 
to care for himself ? Would that be break- 
ing your agreement ?" 



GABRIELLE'S BABY 107 

As she stood there — intelligence, dis- 
tinction speaking from all her person — 
fearfully putting this pitiful question, I 
experienced another of those maddening 
moments we live through in Belgium. 
One swiftly doubts one's reason — the 
situation — everything ! The world simply 
can not be so completely lost as it seems ! 

Mercifully this would not be breaking 
any promise ; and I begged for the name. 

But even then I was rather hopeless 
that our American would know. In the 
North of France he must live with his 
German officer; he is not free to mingle 
with the French people. 

Thursday, conference day, came, 
when all the little white flags rush in 
from their provinces, bringing our 
splendid American men — their faces 
stern, strained, but with that beautiful 
light in them that testifies they are giv- 
ing without measure the best they have 
to others. 



108 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Never will any one, who has experi- 
enced it, forget the thrill he felt when 
he saw those fifteen cars with their 
forty-two men rushing up, one after the 
other to 66, rue des Colonies, nor the 
line of them all day on the curb with 
their fluttering white flags carrying the 
red C. R. B. ! There were no other cars 
to be seen. Each person, as he passed, 
knew that these fifteen white flags 
meant wheat and life to 10,000,000 
people. 

As I stood there I heard a band. I 
looked up the street and saw the Ger- 
man soldiers goose-stepping before their 
guard mount. This happens every 
morning, just a square above our offices. 
The white flags and the goose-step — 
they pretty much sum up the situation ! 

I hurried inside, hoping fervently to 
hear the longed-for answer, as I put the 
name and my question. 

But the name was strange to S., he 



GABRIELLE'S BABY 109 

could tell me nothing, tho he felt sure 
that by keeping his ears open that week, 
he might learn something. 

How often through those days I 
thought of these two, caught in this war- 
night of separation. For two and a 
half years neither had been able to call 
across it even the name of the other. 
And then of the word thrown into the 
night with hope and prayer! 

On the next meeting day, as he hur- 
ried toward me, I could see from S.'s 
face that he had news. "Yes," he said 
eagerly, "he is still there, he draws his 
ration — he is not suffering from want, 
he has enough left to pay for his food. 
But when he heard that somebody 
would possibly carry this news to his 
dearest living relation, he cried: 'Oh! 
Would it not be possible to do just 
one thing more! I am eighty-two; 
I may die before this terrible war is 
ended. In pity will not somebody tell me 



110 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

before I die if any of my nieces has had 
a little baby, or if any one of them is 
going to have a little baby?' 

"And now," S. said, "you and I 
know that if the Relief stops, we've got to 
find out for that poor old man that there 
is a baby!" 

And I went about it. On Thursday, 
when he rushed over to me I could call: 
"Yes, there is one! It's Gabrielle's! A 
little girl, five months old and doing 
beautifully !" 

"Hurrah!" he shouted, and hurried 
back to his tons and calories. 

It is four months since then, and I do 
not know if there are any more babies, 
or if that old gentleman of a distin- 
guished house has had any other than 
this single connection with the loved ones 
of this family in over two and a half 
years. 



XII 

THE "DROP OF MILK" 

BELGIUM is succoring her weak 
children, but she is going deeper 
than this: she is trying to prevent 
weak children. All through the country 
there are cantines where an expectant or 
young mother without means may receive 
free a daily dinner, consisting usually of a 
thick soup, a meat or tgg dish with vege- 
tables, a dessert with lactogenized cream, 
and a measure of milk. Light service, 
like the peeling of vegetables, is often re- 
quired in return. The mother may come 
as early as three months before the birth 
of her child, and if she is still nursing it, 
may continue nine months after its birth. 
About 7,000 mothers are receiving this 
dinner, and 6,000 more come to the 
111 



112 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

affiliated consultation cantines for advice. 

Of course, there are always those who 
can not nurse their children, or who can 
carry them through but a short period, 
when the question of pasteurized milk be- 
comes all-important. The "Goutte de 
Lait" (drop of milk) sections meet this 
problem by offering the necessary feed- 
ings of pure milk. The mother may pay 
for the bottles, and have them delivered, 
or she may, if necessitous, receive them 
free by calling or sending for them. 

In Antwerp, where this work has 
assumed unusual proportions, a big- 
hearted president of the Belgian Provin- 
cial Committee got permission to pur- 
chase ioo cows in Holland and to hold 
them without danger of requisition. He 
installed a model dairy on his place, and 
now gives all the baby cantines pure 
milk. He is always most anxious to fin- 
ish his arduous day's work at the bureau, 
so that he may return to his dairy, ex- 



THE "DROP OF MILK" 113 

amine the milk tests, and review his fine 
herd. One of his daughters, in addition 
to hours spent in the cantines, takes the 
entire responsibility of the management 
of this dairy. Other towns are less for- 
tunate, and must struggle continually to 
get the milk they require. There is a 
beautiful development of the work of a 
"Goutte de Lait" in Hasselt, in a cantine 
occupying part of a maternity hospital. 
There they have an admirable equip- 
ment for sterilization and pasteurization. 
At 7 o'clock in the morning I found the 
women directors already busy with the 
preparation of the milk. Each feed- 
ing has its separate bottle, and may be 
kept sealed till the baby receives it. After 
seven months, white phosphatine, a 
mixture of the flour of wheat, rice and 
corn, with salt, sugar and phosphate of 
lime, is furnished; at fourteen months, 
cocoa is added, and after two years, soup 
and bread. 



114 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

I happened to arrive on the weekly 
weighing day. One hundred mothers 
were gathered in a large, cheery room, 
their babies in their arms, many of them 
gay in the pretty bonnets the doctor's 
wife had made for those who had the 
best records. They passed, a few at a? 
time, into the smaller room where the 
doctor and his wife examined, weighed, 
counseled, while two assistants regis- 
tered important details; the three young 
nurses generally aided the mothers and 
their chiefs. 

Then I was shown an adjoining room, 
where, in the corners, there were heaps 
of little white balls rolled in wax paper. 
From a distance they looked more than 
anything else like tiny popcorn balls. 
What could they mean? I took one in 
my hand and saw that they meant that 
the most precious prize that can be 
offered a Belgian mother to-day is a tiny 
ball of white lard! With the more 



THE "DROP OF MILK" 115 

ignorant, this prize-system is the swiftest 
means of opening the way. The doctor 
laughed as he recounted his struggle with 
one obstinate woman, who argued stoutly 
that because the cow is a great, strong 
creature, while she herself is but small 
and frail, undoubtedly its milk would be 
infinitely more strengthening to her child 
than her own! Where argument failed, 
the prize convinced. If a mother can 
nurse her baby but neglects to, she is 
forced to feed it regularly before some 
member of the committee. Nurses visit 
all the homes registered. 

The attempt is being made everywhere 
to induce mothers who are not actually in 
want, to enroll in these cantines, while 
paying for their food, that they may have 
the benefit of the pure milk and the phy- 
sician's care. The "Relief" is not count- 
ing the cost of this fundamental work — 
the baby cantines are the promise of the 
future. They are already closely watch- 



116 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

ing the development of 53,000 babies. 
The educational value alone can not be 
measured; women who had not the faint- 
est conception of the simplest laws of 
hygiene are being trained, forced to learn, 
because their own and their children's 
food can come to them only from the 
hand of their teacher. While the war has 
brought unutterable misery, it has also 
brought extraordinary opportunity, and 
Belgium is seizing this opportunity wher- 
ever she can. 



XIII 

LAYETTES 

AND babies must be clothed, as well 
as fed! I visited one of the Brus- 
sels layette centers with the C. R. 
B. American advisory physician, whose 
interest in children had brought him at 
once face to face with what women are 
doing to save them. We went to a little 
cantine consisting of a room and ante- 
room on the ground floor, and, I might 
add, the sidewalk — for before we reached 
it we saw the line of hatless mothers with 
their tiny babies wrapt in shawls in their 
arms, waiting their turn. This was a 
depot where they might receive the 
articles for the lying-in period and cloth- 
ing for babies under six months of age. 
We passed through the anteroom, where 

117 



118 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

a number sat nursing their babies (young- 
mothers mostly, and many of them 
pretty, into the distributing-room. 

Here we found three directors very 
busy at their tables with the record-cards, 
books and other materials of their organi- 
zation, and three younger women rapidly 
sorting out the tiny bibs, slips and sheets 
heaped high on the counters along the 
walls. From the miscellaneous piles 
they produced the neat little layettes — 
each a complete wardrobe for an ex- 
pectant or young mother, and compris- 
ing 4 squares, 2 swaddling cloths, 3 
fichus, 4 brassieres, 2 shirts, 2 bands, 2 
pair socks, 2 bonnets, 3 bibs, 1 hooded 
cloak. The packages for children from 
three to six months held 3 squares, 2 
pantaloons, 2 bibs, 2 fichus, 2 shirts, 2 
brassieres, 2 dresses. 

As the mothers came in, the babies 
were carefully weighed and examined, 
the records added to, through direct, 



LAY BYTES liy 

effective questioning — always gentle and 
encouraging. The young women turned 
over the needed garments, with advice 
about their use, chiefly regarding cleanli- 
ness. To support this advice, they at- 
tempted to have the materials white as 
far as possible. 

When I asked what they most needed, 
they said, "Cradles, Madame, cradles. 
We could place fifty a week in this can- 
tine alone, and white materials for sheets 
and blankets— and oh, hundreds of yards 
of rubber sheeting or its equivalent !" 
For very evident reasons, the C. R. B. is 
not allowed to bring in rubber materials 
of any kind. Many mothers, as the babies 
arrive, appeal for beds for the older chil- 
dren and for mattresses for themselves. 
"We can still get ticking in Brussels if 
we have the money, but nothing to stuff it 
with." 

Every morning since the beginning of 
the war these women have been there, on 



120 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

their feet most of the time — sorting, ar- 
ranging packages of garments, and keep- 
ing in their minds and hearts the hun- 
dreds of mothers and babies who depend 
on them. They often visit the homes 
after cantine hours. Madame smiled as 
she explained the necessity of a personal 
investigation of each case. "For in- 
stance/' she said, "if at the children's 
cantine I gave a youngster a pair of shoes 
simply because he seemed to have none, 
and without personally proving that he 
had none, I should undoubtedly have an 
entire barefoot family the next day!" 

It was with this particular kind of work 
that the Petites Abeilles or "Little Bees" 
started five years before the war. A group 
of young women banded together to help 
children, and organized centers in Brus- 
sels for the distribution of needed cloth- 
ing. Their efforts at once won the en- 
thusiasm of the people. Poets wrote 
songs to "The Little Bees," the Queen 



LAYETTES 121 

and the adored Princess Marie- Jose were 
their patronesses — they were probably the 
most popular organization of their kind in 
Belgium. 

Then the war came, and the mothers 
quickly took charge. They established a 
vast home for refugees, where they 
housed over 5,000. Later they appealed 
to the Relief Committee to be allowed to 
develop their work to meet the terrible 
emergency. Their offer was only too 
gladly accepted, and one after another 
cantine for feeding, as well as clothing, 
was opened in the various sections of the 
city ; where to-day practically all the work 
for the children is carried on by these 
wonderful "Little Bees" and their 
mothers. By July, 1916, their 124 Brussels 
sections were caring for about 25,000 
children, and between 2,500 and 3,000 
women were giving a great part of their 
time to the work. Social barriers disap- 
peared. All classes rallied to the need. 



122 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Four hundred telephone girls out of work 
were doing their best, side by side with 
countesses. 

As we were leaving, Madame explained 
that the woman who founded this par- 
ticular cantine was a prisoner in Ger- 
many. The three beautiful young girls 
sorting the layettes were the daughters, 
carrying forward their mother's work. 
I was to learn that almost invariably at 
some moment of my visit, the veil would 
be withdrawn and the tragedy revealed. 



XIV 

THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 

TO the world Liege is the symbol of 
Belgium's courage. During eleven 
days her forts withheld an over- 
whelming force, reckless of its size or her 
own unpreparedness, determined to save 
the national integrity of Belgium. And 
well Belgium knew to what point she 
could count on the brave Liegeois; 
through all her troubled history, they had 
been the ardent champions of her free- 
dom. 

This beautiful city on the Meuse es- 
caped the ruin visited on other parts of 
her province. In fact, all the four largest 
cities of Belgium escaped, in each case a 
smaller neighboring town, especially pic- 
turesque, stands as an example of de- 

123 



124 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

struction and warning. Belgians ask if 
it was not with the obvious intent of cow- 
ing the nearby capital, that Dinant was 
made an example to Namur, Nimy to 
Mons, Louvain to Brussels? They point 
out that tho only the ghost of lovely 
Visee remains, Liege itself has lost but 
about ioo buildings. After the final in- 
evitable surrender of her forts, the at- 
tacking army passed on, leaving her un- 
der powerful control. But tho the 
material damage was small, as the popu- 
lous center of a great industrial region, 
this city was one of the first to realize the 
distress that followed the occupation and 
isolation of Belgium. One by one her 
famous firearm factories and glass mills 
closed their doors, and poured their thou- 
sands of workmen into the streets. In 
many cases the factories were dismantled, 
the machinery taken to Germany to make 
munitions. And this was happening all 
through the province, so that by 191 5 it 



THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 125 

counted 90,000 idle workmen (chomeurs), 
and in the capital alone, fully 18,000. 
Ordinarily (among her 180,000 inhabit- 
ants) Liege lists 43,000 skilled workmen; 
so for her the proportion of idle was al- 
most one-half; with their families they 
represented but little less than one-quarter 
of the entire population. The 4,000 em- 
ployed in the coal mines, which, for- 
tunately, were able to keep open, were 
the one saving factor in the situation. 

The question of chomage, or unem- 
ployment, is the most serious the relief 
organization has had to face. It has 
been most acute in the two Flanders; but 
in Antwerp, with its 25,000 idle dock 
hands, in the highly industrial Hainault, 
in Namur and Brabant, as well as in 
Liege, there have been special circum- 
stances developing particular difficulties. 
Over 665,000 workmen without work, 
representing millions of dependents, would 
present a sufficiently critical problem to 



126 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

a country not at war. One can imagine 
what it means to a country every square 
foot of which is controlled by an enemy 
so hated that the conquered would risk 
all the evils of continued non-employment 
rather than have any of its people serve 
in any way the ends of the invader. Bet- 
ter roads, better railways, mean greater 
facility for the Germans. 

None of the leaders I have talked with 
have been satisfied with the system 
evolved, but no one has yet been able to 
substitute a better. 

A scheduled money allowance for the 
chomeur was quickly adopted, but as a 
friend from Tournai said, this enabled a 
man simply to escape complete starva- 
tion, but not to live. Three francs a week 
for the workman, one franc and a half for 
his wife, fifty centimes for each of his 
children, or one dollar and ten cents a 
week for a family of four, just about the 
war price of one pound of butter or meat ! 



THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 127 

Obviously the chomeur and his family 
must draw on the soupes and cantines, 
and this they do. They form a consider- 
able part of the one and one-quarter mil- 
lions of the soup-lines. Every province 
has tried to reduce its number of unem- 
ployed by providing a certain amount of 
work on roads and public utilities. 
Luxembourg has been conspicuous in this 
attempt, reclaiming swamps, rebuilding 
sewer systems and roadways, employing 
about 10,000 men. In fact, Luxembourg 
has so far almost avoided a chomeur 
class. 

Throughout the country, too, the cloth- 
ing and lace committees are furnishing 
at least partial employment to women. 
In a lesser way various local relief com- 
mittees are most ingenious in inventing 
opportunities to give work. In the face 
of the whole big problem they often seem 
insignificant, but every community is 
heartened by even the smallest attempt to 



128 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

restore industry. I have seen fifty men 
given the chance to buy their own food 
by means of a "soles work." All the 
needy of the village were invited to bring 
their worn shoes to have a new kind of 
wooden sole put on for the winter, and 
the men were paid by the committee for 
putting them on. In one city the owner 
of a closed firearm factory has opened a 
toy works where ioo men and 30 women 
are kept busy carving little steel boxes 
and other toys. If these articles could be 
exported, such establishments would 
quickly multiply, but every enterprize 
must halt at the grim barrier. 

In Liege I came upon a most pic- 
turesque attempt at an individual solu- 
tion. I had been much interested in Ant- 
werp and Charleroi and other cities, in 
the "Diner Economique" or "Diner Bour- 
geois," conducted by philanthropic 
women. These are big, popular restau- 
rants, where because of a subsidy from 



THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 129 

the relief committee, and because almost 
all of the service is contributed, a meal 
can be served for less than it costs. For 
a few centimes, about ten cents, usually, 
one may have a good soup, a plate with 
meat and vegetables, and sometimes a 
dessert. 

Wonderful Belgian women come day 
after day, month after month, to serve 
the thousands that flock to these centers 
that save them from the soup-lines. If 
they can add this dinner to their relief 
ration, they can live. And they are not 
"accepting charity!" The dining-rooms 
are always attractive, often bright with 
flags and flowers, the women are cheery 
in their service. Priests, children, artists, 
men and women of every class sit at the 
tables. Once I saw a poor mother buy 
one dinner for herself and her two chil- 
dren, and fortunately, too, I saw a swift 
hand slip extra portions in front of the 
little ones. There are ten such restau- 



130 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

rants in Antwerp (five conducted by the 
Catholics, and five by the Liberals) that 
serve on an average over 10,000 dinners 
a day. The one in Charleroi serves from 
400 to 900 daily. 

In Liege the work is consolidated. I 
found the once popular skating-rink 
turned into a mighty restaurant, gay with 
American bunting. The skating floor 
was crowded with tables, the surround- 
ing spectators' space made convenient 
cloak-rooms, the one-time casual buffet 
was a kitchen in deadly earnest, supply- 
ing dinners to about 4,000 daily. 

When I arrived, there was already a 
line outside; each person had to present 
a card on entering to prove him a citizen 
of Liege. If he could, he paid 75 centimes 
(15 cents) for his dinner. If unable to, 
by presenting a special card from the Re- 
lief Committee, he might receive it for 
60, or even 30 centimes — a little more 
than 5 cents. 



THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 131 

Inside the tables were crowded, sixty- 
five women were hurrying between them 
and back and forth to the directors who 
stood at a long counter in front of the 
kitchen, serving the thousands of por- 
tions, of soup, sausage, and a kind of 
stew of rice and vegetables. 

In the kitchen and meat and vegetable 
rooms there was the constant clamor of 
sifting, cutting, stirring, of the opening 
and shutting of ovens. While the 
sausages of the day were being hurried 
from the pans, the soup of the morrow 
was being mixed in the great caldrons; 
250 men were hard at work. Somehow 
they did not look as tho they had been 
peeling carrots and stirring soup all their 
lives — there was an inspiring dash in 
their movements that prevented it seem- 
ing habitual. 

The superintendent laughed: "Yes," 
he said, "they are chiefly railroad engi- 
neers, conductors, various workmen of 



132 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

the Liege Railroad Company! I myself 
was an attorney for the road, and I am 
really more interested in this ceuvre from 
the point of view of these men, than be- 
cause of the general public it helps. Here 
are 250 men who are giving their best 
service to their country. In working for 
others they have escaped the curse of 
being forced to work for the Germans! 
The sixty-five women serving the 
4,000 were once in the telephone service. 
They also offered to devote themselves to 
their fellow-sufferers, and they are so 
proud, so happy to be able to stand 
shoulder to shoulder with other women in 
this black hour/' 

I asked if each worker were given his 
dinner. "Ah! there was a problem!" he 
said. "The meals which we furnish for 
from 30 to 75 centimes, cost us an aver- 
age of 63 centimes." To supply this to 
250 assistants was quite beyond the sub- 
sidy allowed the Relief. And yet the 



THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 1S3 

workers certainly must be fed. Finally he 
admitted that he and a group of friends 
were contributing the money necessary to 
supply these meals. He added that in the 
beginning the men were hardly able to 
give more than two hours' hard work a 
day, but that after a few months of 
proper nourishment their energy was in- 
exhaustible. 

On another day I found there were no 
potatoes, and that the number of meals 
served had in consequence dropt fully 
1,000; 743 at 75 centimes, 820 at 60 
centimes, 1,473 at 3° centimes. If there 
are no potatoes to be had in the city, and 
they are known to be on the carte of the 
restaurant, there is not standing-room. 
Hundreds have to be turned away. 

This kind of double oeuvre is quite 
the most interesting of all the varied at- 
tempts to meet the staggering problem 
Belgium has daily to face. 



XV 

A ZEPPELIN 

I WENT down the road toward Ver- 
viers. I stopt at a farmhouse to talk 
with the farmer about the pitiful ration 
of the Liege coal miners. They travel 
many miles underground, and there is no 
way of getting hot soup to them. His wife 
gave me a glass of sweet milk. Then 
we went into the courtyard where he had 
a great caldron of prune syrup simmer- 
ing. 

The summer had been wet and gray, 
but September was doing her best to 
make up for it. Suddenly I heard the 
soft whirr-whirr of a Zeppelin. I ran 
out into the road. The farmer left his 
prunes to join me. We watched the 

134 



A ZEPPELIN 135 

great strange thing gliding through the 
sunshine. It was flying so low that we 
could easily distinguish the fins, the 
gondolas, the propellers. It looked more 
than anything else like a gigantic, un- 
earthly model for the little Japanese 
stuffed fishes I had often seen in the 
toy shops. Its blunt nose seemed shining 
white, the rest a soft gray. The effect of 
the soothing whirring and its slow glid- 
ing through the air was indescribable; 
that it could be anything but a gentle 
messenger of peace was unbelievable. 
"Ah, Madame," said my companion, 
"four years ago I saw my first Zeppelin ! 
It seemed a beautiful vision from another 
world, like something new in my re- 
ligion. We all stood breathless, praying 
for the safety of this wonderful new 
being; praying that the brave men who 
conducted it might be spared to the 
world. And to-day, Madame, may it be 
blown to atoms ; if necessary may its men 



136 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

be cut to bits; may they be burned to 
ashes — anything — anything ! With an un- 
dying hate I swear it shall be destroyed! 
Madame, that is what war does to a man ! 
War, Madame, is a horrible thing !" 



XVI 

NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 

THE cereal and fat reserves are 
divided between Rotterdam, the 
mills, warehouses and moving 
lighters in Belgium and Northern 
France, so that one can never see the 
dramatic heaping up in one place of the 
grain that is to feed 10,000,000 for six 
days, or months. But the greater part 
of the clothing reserves are held in the 
one city of Brussels. Their housing fur- 
nishes another of the bewildering con- 
trasts wrought by the war; what was 
two years ago a huge, thrilling Hippo- 
drome is now filled with the silent ranks 
of bolts of cotton and flannel. And not 

137 



168 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

far away, the once popular skating-rink 
is piled to the ceiling with finished gar- 
ments; stage boxes, galleries, dressing- 
rooms, stairways — all are heaped with 
cases and stacked with racks. The ceil- 
ing is the only part of the edifice still 
visible; along the rear wall, for instance, 
runs a big sign, "Garments for Babies," 
and they mount to the skylights. Stocks 
are accumulating in both these build- 
ings and other sub-centers during the 
summer, and in the autumn the work 
of distribution against the approaching 
winter begins, October 1st registering 
the high-water mark of assets. At that 
time there were three and a half million 
pieces, yards and pairs, on the shelves 
of the Hippodrome, and already hun- 
dreds of thousands of garments assem- 
bled in the skating-rink. 

The Rink is not more than a few yards 
and minutes from the Hippodrome, but 
a bolt of flannel may travel many miles 



NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 139 

and occupy several weeks in going from 
one to the other. That journey explains 
the marvelous development of the cloth- 
ing organization. One may go even 
further, and trace the cloth from the 
donor in America, to the recipient in 
Mons or Tournai! In fact, I once 
thought I recognized a finished blouse, 
as plaid flannel contributed in San 
Francisco. I may have been mistaken, 
but I let my mind follow that flannel 
from the hand of the little school- 
teacher on the Pacific, to the unhappy 
mother in Tournai ! 

For when the C. R. B. sent out a call 
for new clothing materials in January, 
1916, somehow it reached a weather- 
beaten school-house on a lonely stretch 
of coast 30 miles south of San Fran- 
cisco. The teacher hurriedly got to- 
gether some wool, and began showing 
her eight pupils (they happened all to 
be boys), how to knit caps for other 



140 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

boys of their own size. Their few families 
gathered what they could, and on her 
first free Saturday, the teacher started 
in an open buggy in the rain for the 
C. R. B. Bureau in San Francisco. This 
meant 30 miles over wretched roads, up 
hill and down, with her precious box. 
When we opened it we found eight 
knitted caps, one small sack of rice, one 
pair of fur-lined gloves, a bag of beans, 
a lady's belt, plaid flannel for a blouse, 
and 40 cents for eight five-cent stamps 
for the letters the boys hoped to receive 
in answer to those they had carefully 
tucked inside the caps. They did not 
know that our orders were to remove 
all writing from all gifts, tho once in a 
while a line did slip in. I saw a touch- 
ing example of what these slips meant 
when I was leaving Brussels. A group 
of women came to me to say, "Madame, 
we hear you are going to California — 
is it true? And, if you are, may we not 



NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 141 

send a message of just a single word by 
you ? Will you not tell Margery Marshall, 
of Saratoga, that the pretty dress she 
sent over a year ago, made a little girl, 
oh, so happy! She has waited all these 
long months hoping to find a way to 
thank Margery — and we want to thank 
Margery. Will you tell her?" 

These offerings then were freighted 
to New York with the month's contribu- 
tions, and there consigned to a C. R. B. 
ship, starting for Rotterdam. In Rot- 
terdam they were unloaded into the 
enormous C. R. B. clothing warehouse, 
a corrugated zinc structure as big as a 
city block. After the examinations, 
valuings and listings, they were re- 
loaded on to one of the C. R. B. barges 
that ply the canals constantly, and 
finally deposited for the Comite Na- 
tional in the Hippodrome at Brussels. 
There the women's work began — in fact, 
to one woman especially is due the credit 



142 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

for the completeness of the organization 
of this clothing department. 

On a certain day the flannel for the 
blouse was piled into a big gray truck 
and hauled across the city to one of the 
most interesting places in Brussels. 
This is at once the central workroom 
for the capital, and the pattern and 
model department for all Belgium. 
Madame . . . has 500 women and men 
working continually, to prepare the 
bundles of cut garments that go out to 
the sub-sections and homes in Brussels. 
If the seamstresses have children they 
may receive one bundle of sewing a 
week ; if not, but one in a fortnight. In 
the ouvroir itself the work is divided be- 
tween shifts who are allowed to come 
for a fortnight each. This is, of course, 
the great sorrow of the committees. If 
only there were enough work to give all 
the time to those whose sole appeal is 
that they be allowed to earn their soup 



NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 143 

and bread! But every hour's work en- 
courages somebody, and the opportuni- 
ties are distributed just as widely as 
possible. In this way about 25,000 are 
reached in Greater Brussels alone. 

The business of preparing these little 
packages of cut-out blouses and trousers 
and bibs is amazing. The placing of 
patterns to save cloth in the cutting is 
the first consideration ; the counting off 
of the buttons, tapes, hooks and neces- 
sary furnishings for millions of gar- 
ments — can we conceive the tediousness 
of this task? Instructions must be care- 
fully marked on a card that is tied across 
the top of the completed bundle, every- 
thing being made as simple for the sewer 
as possible. They travel from one coun- 
ter to another, from one room to the 
next, even up and down stairs, be- 
fore compact, neat and complete, they 
are finally registered and ready to 
go to the waiting women, who will 



144 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

make them into the skirts or baby slips 
or men's shirts or suits that the relief 
committees will distribute. 

That is the Brussels side of the work; 
the national side appears in the pattern 
and model department. Madame has 
developed this to an extraordinary de- 
gree. Here dozens of people are bend- 
ing over counters, folding, measuring, 
cutting heavy brown paper into shapes 
for every particular article that is to be 
given to every particular man, baby and 
woman in Belgium. There are patterns 
for children of every age, and for grown- 
ups, of every width and length — hundreds 
of patterns for all the workrooms in all 
the provinces. Then there are sample 
picture-charts showing how the patterns 
must be placed for the most advantage- 
ous cutting. Along with every type of 
pattern goes one finished model for exhi- 
bition in the workroom. In the models 
the women may see just how the little 



NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 145 

bundles that started originally from the 
Hippodrome should look, when they are 
shipped back as garments to the Rink. 

And it was for one of these models for 
a blouse that the school-teacher's plaid 
was used! As sample blouse it traveled 
from the Brussels pattern center to 
an ouvroir in the Southern Hainaut: 
it hung in a workroom in Mons! 
After hundreds of blouses had been 
copied from it and distributed in the 
province, the pattern department de- 
cided to change the blouse model, and 
the old one was sent back to Brussels to 
the skating-rink, to be apportioned 
again, as it happened, to the relief com- 
mittee in Tournai, which knew the need 
of the mother who wore it the day I 
saw her! Too much system, you will 
say. But there should be no such criti- 
cism until one has seen with his own 
eyes several millions depending entirely 
on a relief organization for covering 



146 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

(blankets and shoes, too, are a necessary- 
part of the aid given), and realize the 
terrible obligations to divide the work 
among as many as possible of the thou- 
sands of unemployed, the necessity of 
a high standard of work, and of jus- 
tice in division among the nine prov- 
inces. 

The scraps from the floors of the 
ouvroirs are carefully hoarded in sacks, 
in the hope that the Germans may grant 
the committee the right to use a factory 
to re-weave them into some rough ma- 
terials in the absence of cotton and wool. 
Some of these cuttings are at present 
being used as filling for quilts. 

The constant contributions of time 
and service at the strictly business ends 
— in the warehouses, or depots like the 
Hippodrome, or the skating-rink — seem 
more generous than all others. In these 
places the committees are shut away 
from that daily contact with misery that 



NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 147 

evokes a quick response. The business 
there has settled down to a matter of 
lists and accounts: one must work with 
a far vision for inspiration. It is quite 
a different matter in the actual ouvroir, 
where grateful women come all day and 
sew, and are sometimes allowed to keep 
their little children beside them. There 
you have their stories and know their 
suffering; you are able, also, to teach 
them, while they sew, how to care for 
their bodies and their homes, even to 
sing, and all the while you realize that 
the very garments they are putting to- 
gether are to go to others even more un- 
happy — these are the places where serv- 
ice has its swift and rich rewards! 
I have visited just such blessed work- 
rooms in Namur and Charleroi and 
Mons, in Antwerp and Dinant, in fact 
in dozens of cities up and down the 
length of Belgium. If they could be 
gaily flagged as they should be, we 



148 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

should see all the country dotted with 
these centers of hope. And we should 
know that they meant that thousands of 
women in Belgium are being given at 
least a few days' work every month. 



XVII 

THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 

BEFORE the war the big music-hall 
in Antwerp offered a gay and di- 
verting program. Every night 
thousands drifted in to laugh and smoke 
— drawn by the human desire for happi- 
ness. Here they were care-free, irre- 
sponsible; tragedy was forgotten. 

To-day it is still a music-hall. As 
Madame opened the door — from the 
floor, from the galleries, from every 
part of the vast place floated a wonder- 
ful solemn music — 1,200 girls were sing- 
ing a Flemish folk-song that might have 
been a prayer. We looked on a sea of 
golden and brown heads bending over 

149 



150 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

sewing tables. Noble women had res- 
cued them from the wreckage of war — 
within the shelter of this music-hall 
they were working for their lives, sing- 
ing for their souls! 

And all the time they were preparing 
the sewing and embroidery materials for 
3,300 others working at home. In other 
words, this was one of the blessed 
ouvroirs or workrooms of Belgium. 

Off at the left a few tailors were cut- 
ting men's garments. High on the 
stage, crowded with packing-cases, sat 
the committee of men who give all their 
time to measuring the goods, register- 
ing the income and output of materials 
and finished garments. On the stage, 
too, was an extraordinary exhibit. Three 
forms presented three of the quaint- 
est silk dresses imaginable, elaborately 
trimmed with ribbons and velvets and 
laces, and all designed for women of 
dainty figure. I laughed and then rather 



THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 151 

flushed, as I remembered the stories of the 
white satin slippers and chiffon ball gowns 
that had been included in our clothing 
offering of 1914. I murmured some- 
thing of apology, and referred to the 
advance the Commission had made in 
I 9 I 5> when it had sent out the appeal for 
new r materials only. 

But Madame protested: "Oh," she 
said, "these are here in honor! And we 
know that somebody once loved these 
dainty dresses, and for that reason gave 
them to us. We love your old clothes ! 
Our only sadness is that we can not have 
them any more. One old dress to be 
made over gives work for days and days, 
while the new materials can be put to- 
gether in one or two. What will become 
of all my girls now that I shall have no 
more of your old clothes to furnish 
them? How shall they earn their 3 
francs (60 cents) a week? At best we 
can allow each but eight days' work out 



152 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

of fifteen, and only one person from 
each family may have this chance. 

"But these three dresses we shall not 
touch!" And she smiled as she looked 
again at her exhibit. 

Here the whole attitude toward the 
clothing is from the point of view, not 
of the protection it gives, but of the em- 
ployment it offers. Without this employ- 
ment, without the daily devotion of the 
wonderful women who have built up 
this astonishing organization, thou- 
sands of other women must have been 
on the streets — with no opportunity 
(except the dread, ever present one) 
through these two years to earn a franc, 
with nothing but the soup-lines to de- 
pend on for bread. Of course, there is 
always dire need for the finished gar- 
ments. They are turned over as fast as 
they can be to the various other commit- 
tees that care for the destitute. Be- 
tween February, 1915, and May, 1916, 




o ™ 

O G 



"3 £. 

1/1 <+* 
•5 ° 



II 



THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 158 

articles valued at over 2,000,000 francs 
were given out in this way through this 
ouvroir alone. 

But one could endure cold — anything 
is better than the moral degrada- 
tion following long periods of non-em- 
ployment. So it is not of the garments, 
but of the 9,500,000 francs dispensed as 
wages, that these women think. The 
work must go on. "See," Madame said, 
"what we do with the veriest scraps!" 
A young woman was putting together 
an attractive baby quilt. She had four 
pieces of an old coat, large enough to 
make the top and lining, and inside she 
was stitching literally dozens of little 
scraps of light woolen materials. An- 
other was making children's shoes out 
of bits of carpet and wool. 

In one whole section the girls do noth- 
ing but embroider our American flour 
sacks. Artists draw designs to repre- 
sent the gratitude of Belgium to the 



154 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

United States. The one on the easel as 
we passed through, represented the lion 
and the cock of Belgium guarding the 
crown of the king, while the sun — the 
great American eagle — rises in the East. 
The sacks that are not sent to America 
as gifts are sold in Belgium as souvenirs. 
Each sack has its value before being 
worked. Many of them — especially in 
the north of France — have been made 
into men's shirts, and tiny babies' shirts 
and slips. 

Before July, 1916, in the Charleroi 
ouvroir, over 30,000 sacks had been 
made into 15,000 shirts at a cost of 25 
centimes per sack, and a sewing price of 
30 centimes each. 

Each Monday the women may work 
on their own garments, and on Tuesday 
all the poor of the city bring their cloth- 
ing to be patched or darned. A shoe sec- 
tion, too, does what it can for old shoes. 
Such shoes and such remnants of socks 



THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 155 

and of shirts as we saw! But the more 
difficult the job, the happier the com- 
mittee ! 

During the week, courses are given in 
the principles of dressmaking and de- 
sign. In the evening there are classes 
for history, geography, literature, writ- 
ing, and very special attention is given 
to hygiene, which is taught by means of 
the best modern slides. These things 
are splendid, and with the three francs 
a week wages, spell self-respect, cour- 
age, progress all along the line. The 
committee has always been able to se- 
cure the money for the wages, but they 
can not possibly furnish the materials — 
sufficient new ones they could never 
have. 

They are living from day to day on 
the hope that the C. R. B. may be able 
to make an exception for the Antwerp 
ouvroir, and appeal once more for her 
precious necessity — "old clothes!" This 



156 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

the C. R. B. may be able to do — but will 
England feel equally free to make an ex- 
ception to her ruling that since the Ger- 
mans have taken the wool from the 
Belgian sheep, no clothing of any kind 
can be sent in ? 

As I was leaving, a thrilling thing 
happened. Picture this sea of golden 
and brown heads low over the heaped 
tables — every square foot of pit, gal- 
leries and entry packed, lengths of cot- 
ton and flannel flung in confusion over 
all the balconies and from the royal box 
like war banners — and then suddenly 
see a man making his way through the 
crowded packing-cases on the stage to 
the footlights! He was the favorite 
baritone of this one-time concert hall, 
and he has come (as he does twice a 
week) to stand in the midst of the pack- 
ing-cases behind his accustomed foot- 
lights to sing to this audience driven in 
by disaster, and to teach them the beau- 



THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 157 

tiful Flemish folk-songs. They sing as 
they work. For several minutes neither 
Madame nor I spoke. Then she smiled 
swiftly and said : "Yes, it is sadly beauti- 
ful — and you know, incidentally, it pre- 
vents much idle chatter!" 



XVIII 

LACE 

A FULL account of the struggle of 
the lace-workers would take us 
straight to the heart of the trag- 
edy of Belgium. At present it can only 
be intimated. The women who are back 
of this struggle represent a fine intelli- 
gence, a most fervent patriotism and 
most unswerving devotion to their peo- 
ple and their country. 

Before the war, her laces were the 
particular pride of Belgium. Flanders 
produced, beside the finest linen, the most 
exquisite lace known. The Queen took 
this industry under her especial patron- 
age and tried in every way to better 
the condition of the workers, and to 

158 



LACE 159 

raise the standard of the output. We 
need to remember that when war broke 
out, 50,000 women were supporting 
themselves, and often their families, 
through this work; we need to remem- 
ber the suddenness with which the steel 
ring was thrown about Belgium — all im- 
port of thread, all export of lace, at once 
and entirely cut off. In a few weeks, 
in a few days, thousands of women were 
without hope of earning their bread — 
at least in the only way hitherto open to 
them. The number grew with desper- 
ate swiftness. And we need most of all 
to remember that the chief lace centers 
were in the zone under direct military 
rule. 

Women like Madame . . . grappled with 
this situation, trying to save their work- 
ers (most of them young girls) from the 
dread alternative, trying by one means and 
another to give them heart, and hoping 
always that America could make a way 



160 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

for them, till finally that hope was 
realized — the C. R. B. had gained the 
permission of England to bring in a cer- 
tain amount of thread, and to take out a 
corresponding amount of lace for sale in 
France and England, or elsewhere. 

A fever of effort followed. Every- 
where those who had been trying to 
keep the groups of lace-workers alive 
were given thread. They organized cen- 
ters for the control of the output. The 
thread must be weighed as it was given 
out, and paid for by the worker as a 
guaranty that it would not be sold to 
some one else; the weight of the lace 
turned in must tally. Much thought 
must be put in the selection of designs, 
into the choice of articles to be made — 
things that would interest the people of 
England and France and America. 

Certain parts and kinds of these laces 
are made in certain districts only. I am 
told that the very fine Malines lace, 



LACE 161 

made now only in a restricted area, will 
not be found much longer. All these 
separate parts must be brought to the 
central depot to be made into tea-cloths 
and doilies and other articles for export. 
The finest and most necessary laces and 
the linen for the cloths are made in or 
about Bruges and Courtrai and in other 
towns in Flanders, in what is known as 
the "fitape," or zone of military prepa- 
ration, with which it is almost impossi- 
ble to communicate. 

The C. R. B. is made absolutely re- 
sponsible to England that no lace will 
be sold in the open market in the occu- 
pied territory (altho it was allowed to 
be sold in October and November, 191 5, 
at exhibitions in several of the large 
cities of Belgium), and that all of it be 
exported. If it is not sold, it must be 
held at Rotterdam. 

One can imagine the meaning of the 
first export of lace to those whose hearts 



162 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

were in this work. It was not only that 
they saw the lace-workers kept alive, but 
they saw their country reunited with 
the outside world. Her beautiful laces 
were going to those who would buy 
them eagerly, her market would be kept 
open. 

Of necessity, the work became 
strongly centralized. The Brussels bu- 
reau, where three noble women espe- 
cially were giving literally every day of 
their time and every particle of their 
energy and talent, became the official 
headquarters, and 45,000 lace-workers 
were employed under orders sent out by 
this central committee. Every day they 
came to plan, to design, to direct. They 
were handling thousands of articles, 
and hundreds of thousands of francs. 
They carefully examined every yard 
sent in, rejecting any piece below the 
standard, encouraging excellence in 
every possible way. Never in recent 



LACE 163 

times have there been such beautiful 
laces made, and they are being sold at 
about half what was asked before the 
war. Many of the designs are copies of 
the best ancient models, other lovely 
ones turn on the present situation, hav- 
ing for motive the roses of the Queen, 
the arms of the provinces, the animals 
of the Allies. 

Madame . . . made an unforgettable 
picture — tall, golden-haired, exquisite, ar- 
ranging and re-arranging the insets for 
her cloths and cushions — and recounting, 
as she set her patterns, the steps in the 
struggle for the lace-workers. There 
had been dangers, some were in prison. 
As I listened I felt the fire within must 
consume her. I understood why there 
were women in prison, why martyrdom 
was always a near and real possibility. 

There were always discouragements 
of one kind or another. At the bureau, 
one day, Madame's eyes were red when 



164 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

she came downstairs. She had just had 
to turn off a group of workers; there 
was no thread to give them. At best, 
in order that all may be helped a little, 
no one person may work more than 30 
hours a week, nor receive more than 3 
francs (or 60 cents) a week as wages! 
But on the whole the lace committees 
are overwhelmingly grateful for the op- 
portunities they have had. Up to 
November, 1916, they have dispensed 
6,000,000 francs in wages. They have 
given two weeks' work a month to 
45,000 women, 25,000 of whom are 
skilled, 10,000 of average ability, and 
10,000 beginners. There will be a de- 
ficit when the war is over. "But what 
of that?" they say, "if only we can keep 
on ! On the Great Day we shall give 
back to the Queen her chosen industry, 
fully three years ahead of where she left 
it. She will find all the standards raised, 
her women better trained and equipped 



LACE 165 

to care for themselves, and to re-estab- 
lish Belgium as the lace-maker of the 
world." 

It has been extremely difficult for the 
C. R. B. to handle the lace in the United 
States. Its great value necessitates 
much more machinery and time than 
could be spared from the all-important 
ravitaillement duty. The orders from 
England and France are much easier to 
take care of. On one happy day Paquin 
wrote for all the Point de Paris 
and Valenciennes they could supply. 
Certain friends in London and New 
York are every now and then sending 
in individual requests. On a red-letter 
day the Queen of Roumania ordered, 
through her Legation, three very beau- 
tiful table-cloths, and quantities of other 
fine laces. And it is the hope of the 
committee that the number of these 
friends will grow. Needless to say, 
hardly a C. R. B. representative leaves 



166 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Belgium without taking with him 
some example of this exquisite work, a 
testimony to others of the splendid de- 
votion of the women of these lace com- 
mittees. 



XIX 

A TOY FACTORY 

I WAS reminded again to-day of how 
constant work must be the only thing 
that makes living possible to many of 
these women. We were at lunch, when 
suddenly the roar of the German 
guns cut across our talk. We rushed 
into the street, where a gesticulating 
crowd had already located the five 
Allied aeroplanes high above us. Little 
white clouds dotted the sky all about 
them — puffs of white smoke that 
marked the bursting shrapnel. Tho the 
guns seemed to be firing just behind our 
house, we believed we were quite out of 
danger. However, Marie ran to us quite 
white and with her hands over her ears. 
"Oh, Madame!" she cried, "the shrap- 

167 



168 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

nel is bursting all about the kitchen !" 
She had experienced it. She had told 
me once that her sister had died of fright 
three days after the war began, and I 
realized now that she probably had. 
Our picturesque Leon slipt over to 
assure me that this was not a real attack, 
but just a visit to give us hope on the 
second anniversary of the beginning of 
the war, to tell us the Allies were think- 
ing of us, and that we should soon be 
delivered. Without doubt they would 
drop a message of some sort. 

I thought of our United States Min- 
ister and his proximity to the Luxem- 
bourg railroad station. He had several 
times smilingly exprest concern over 
that proximity. 

I remembered, too, the swift answer 
of Monsieur . . . who lives opposite the 
railroad station at Mons. Bombs had 
just been dropt on this station — one had 
fallen in front of his house, and when 



A TOY FACTORY 169 

I asked if he and his wife would not con- 
sider moving he replied, "Madame, our 
two sons are in the trenches — should we 
not be ashamed to think of this as 
danger?" 

All the while the aeroplanes were 
circling and the guns were booming. 
Then suddenly one of the aviators made 
a sensational drop to within a few hun- 
dred meters of the Molenbeek Station, 
threw his bombs, and before the guns 
could right themselves, regained his 
altitude — and all five were off, marvel- 
ously escaping the puffs of white before 
and behind them. 

This was thrilling, till suddenly 
flashed the sickening realization of what 
it really meant. The man behind the 
gun was doing his utmost to kill the 
man in the machine. It was horrible — 
horrible to us. 

But to Belgian wives and mothers 
what must it have been? As they 



170 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

looked up they cried: "Is that my boy 
— my husband, who has come back to 
his home this way? After two years, 
is he there? My God, can they reach 
him?" The only answer was the roar 
of the guns, the bursting shrapnel — and 
they covered their eyes. 

I visited Madame . . . , whose only son 
is in the flying corps, at her toy factory 
the following day, and realized what 
the experience had cost her. Her com- 
ment, however, was, "Well, now I be- 
lieve I am steeled for the next." 

Madame is accomplishing one of the 
finest pieces of work being done in Bel- 
gium to-day. Before the war she had 
a considerable reputation as a painter 
in water colors. As suddenly as it came, 
she found her home emptied of sons, 
brothers, nephews, and she went 
through the common experience of try- 
ing to construct something from the 
chaos of those tragic days. Her first 



A TOY FACTORY 171 

thought was of what must be done for 
the little nephews and nieces who were 
left. They must be kept happy as well as 
alive. And she wondered if she could not 
turn her painting to use in making toys 
for them. Often before the war when 
sketching in Flanders she had looked at 
the quaint old villages, full of beauty in 
color and line, and felt that each was a 
jewel in itself and ought, somehow, to be 
preserved as a whole. And suddenly she 
decided to try and reproduce them in 
toy form for children. She drew beau- 
tiful designs of the villages of Furnes 
and Dixmude, loving ones of churches 
that had already been destroyed. She 
secured wood, began carving her houses, 
trees, furniture — then arranged her vil- 
lages, drawing the patterns for the chil- 
dren to build from. Needless to say trie 
nieces and nephews were enchanted; 
and she worked ahead on other villages 
for other children. 



172 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Not very long after this she visited 
the Queen's ambulance in the palace at 
Brussels, and as she talked with the 
wounded Belgian soldiers, the thought 
of the hopeless future of the mutilated 
ones tormented her. It suddenly flashed 
over her that they might be given hope, 
if they could be taught to make her be- 
loved toys. She was allowed to bring 
in models — the soldiers were interested 
at once — the authorities gave her per- 
mission to teach them. 

Later she secured a building in Brus- 
sels — her sister-in-law and others of her 
family came to help. They wisely laid 
in a good supply of beechwood in ad- 
vance, got their paints and other ma- 
terials ready, and began to work with a 
handful of soldiers. She soon needed 
machines for cutting the wood, and then 
found that no matter how thoroughly 
healed, a man who has been terribly 
wounded, the equilibrium of whose body 



A TOY FACTORY 173 

had been destroyed by the loss of an 
arm or leg, or both, could not soon be 
trusted with a dangerous machine — and 
she had to engage a few expert work- 
men for this department. Girls begged 
to be taken in, and she added nine to her 
fifty soldiers — one of them a pretty, 
black-haired refugee from the north of 
France. The thick book with all the ad- 
dresses of applicants for work who have 
had to be refused, is a mute evidence of 
the saddest part of this whole situation 
— the lack of work for those who beg to 
be kept off the soup-lines. 

The fortunate ones are paid by piece- 
work, but always the directors try to 
arrange that each man shall be able to 
earn about 2^2 francs a day. 

Madame is not merely accomplishing 
a present palliative, but aiming at mak- 
ing men self-respecting, useful members 
of the State for their own and their 
country's good. 



XX 

ANOTHER TOY FACTORY 

THE following day, I visited an- 
other kind of toy factory. 
Madame . . ., who had lost her 
only son early in the war, works proba- 
bly in the most inconvenient building in 
Brussels, which she has free of charge. 
She works there all day long, every day, 
furnishing employment for between 30 
and 40 girls," who would otherwise have 
to be on the soupes. I went from one 
room to another, where they were busily 
constructing dolls, and animals, and all 
sorts of fascinating toys out of bits of 
cotton and woolen materials — cheap, 
salable toys. 

This is one of the things that we must 

174 



ANOTHER TOY FACTORY 175 

remember if we wish properly to appre- 
ciate the work the women are doing — 
most of it is being carried on in build- 
ings that we should consider almost im- 
possible — -no elevators; everywhere the 
necessity of climbing long flights of 
stairs; no convenient sanitary arrange- 
ments — but nothing discourages them. 

Madame began by making bouncing 
balls in the Belgian colors, stuffed with 
a kind of moss. They cost only a few 
centimes, and sold as fast as she could 
make them. When the order came that 
they were no longer to be made in these 
colors, she ripped up those she had on 
hand, and began new ones, omitting the 
black. The balls must go on. Another 
day all the stuffing for her balls was 
requisitioned. She rushed out, up and 
down, street after street, seeking a sub- 
stitute, and by night the little store- 
room was filled with a kind of dry grass 
— and the balls could go on. 



176 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

The day of my first visit there were 
6 of the 32 girls absent because of 
illness. Madame said she usually had 
that large a percentage out because of 
intestinal troubles of one sort or an- 
other. They get desperately tired of 
their monotonous food, and whenever 
they can scrape together a few extra 
pennies, they go to one of the few choco- 
late shops still open and make them- 
selves ill. 

Here, too, they are looking to Amer- 
ica. If only they could get their toys 
to our markets, they could take in many 
who are suffering for want of work — ■ 
and one feels that America would be 
delighted with every toy. 

It is Madame herself who designs 
them. She is trying always to get some- 
thing new, striking. In the C. R. B. 
office one day I noticed a representative 
off in a corner, busy with his pencil, and 
found him struggling to represent some 



ANOTHER TOY FACTORY 177 

sort of balancing bird — a suggestion for 
Madame. 

She makes these lovely toys from the 
veriest scraps of cloth, old paper, straw, 
with pebbles picked up from the roads 
for weights. 

In the beginning she knew nothing at 
all about such work, nor did any one of 
the young girls she was trying to help. 
But such a spirit experiments ! She ground 
newspapers in a meat-grinder to try to 
evolve some kind of papier-mache. She 
learned her processes by producing 
things with her own hands, and then 
taught each woman as she employed 
her. Thus she, too, is not only keeping 
her corps from the present soup-line, but 
preparing a body of trained workers 
for the future. The shops in Brussels 
sell these toys — a few have reached as 
far as Holland. 

Everywhere in Belgium one is imprest 
with the facility in the handling of 



178 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

color, of clay or wood. There is the 
most unusual feeling for decorative 
effect; the tiniest children in the schools 
show a striking aptitude for design and 
modeling, and an astonishing sense of 
rhythm. One is constantly struck by 
this; it is a delight to hear a group of 
three-year olds carrying an intricate 
song without accompaniment, as they 
go through the figures of a dance. 



XXI 



THE MUTILES 



AT last I met the little Madame— all 
nerve, energy — a flame flashing 
from one plant under her charge 
to the next. I had seen her whirling by 
in a car, one of the two Belgian women 
allowed a limited pass. I had heard how 
she presided over councils of men, as 
well as of women; that she had won the 
admiration of all. With her it is not a 
question of how many hours she spends; 
she gives literally every hour of her 
time. It was especially of her work for 
the mutilated victims of the war that we 
talked this morning. She took me to 
the park at Woulwe, where she has 180 
men being trained in various trades, 

179 



180 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Ten months ago she decided that one 
of the most important things Belgium 
had to accomplish was to save its muti- 
lated for themselves and the State. The 
whole problem of the unemployment 
brought on by the war was terrific. In 
April, 1916, over 672,000 workmen were 
idle. But the mutilated soldiers formed 
the most heartbreaking part of this 
problem. They must at once be taught 
trades that would fill their days and 
make them self-supporting in the future. 

First of all, their surroundings must 
be cheerful and healthy; no cramped 
buildings in the city, and yet something 
easily accessible from Brussels. She 
told me how she searched the environs 
until she came upon an old, apparently 
deserted villa at Woulwe with beautiful 
spacious grounds, orchard and vegetable 
garden. She quickly sought out the 
owner and appealed to him to turn his 
property over to the "Mutiles." In 



THE MUTILES 181 

three days a letter told her the request 
was granted, and within a few hours an 
architect was at work on the plans. He 
developed a cottage system with every- 
thing on one floor, sleeping-rooms, 
workrooms, unlimited fresh air and 
light; the most modern sanitary equip- 
ment; and for the workrooms, every 
practical arrangement possible. There 
is a gymnasium with a resident physi- 
cian directing the work. His duty is 
one of the most difficult; it is not easy 
to convince the men of the value of all 
the bothersome exercises he prescribes. 
The restoration of the equilibrium of 
their broken bodies is to them often a 
vague end. At first some even try to 
escape using the artificial arms and legs 
provided them. 

The cottages are grouped about the 
garden, under the trees, connected by 
easy little paths for the lame and the 
blind. The old villa holds the office, 



182 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

the dining-room, and a big, airy pavilion, 
where the men may gather for a 
weekly entertainment, cards or music. 
A bowling alley has been converted 
into the quaintest little chapel imagin- 
able, with the Virgin Mary and the 
statues of the King and Queen in very 
close company, and back of them a 
splendid Belgian flag. Besides the regu- 
lar gatherings, the men hold special 
services here for their comrades dead on 
the Field of Honor. 

One by one new cottages are being 
built; more trades are being taught. 
Electricity and book-binding have been 
added recently, and the course for chauf- 
feurs. The greater number of the men 
work in the shoe shops, where there is 
one workroom for the Walloons and 
another for the Flemings; but the scar- 
city of leather greatly hinders this im- 
portant department. In certain sections 
they are already using machinery manu- 



THE MUTILES 183 

factured by the men themselves. And 
it must be kept in mind all the time that 
these men before the war were almost 
without exception in the fields. 

Madame told us that the most cheer- 
ful workmen are the blind, who seemed, 
however, most to be pitied, as they sat 
there weaving their baskets and chair 
seats. She said that often during their 
weekly entertainments the entire com- 
pany would be thrown into spasms of 
laughter by the sudden meowing of cats 
or cackling of hens in their midst. These 
were the tricks of the blind men, who 
were as gay as children. 

The atelier is truly a joyous place, set 
in a garden tended by the soldiers, and 
inside flooded with light. The walls are 
covered with models and designs. Some 
of the men were busy with patterns for 
lace and embroidery. Others were 
modeling. A legless soldier, in the 
trenches only a month ago, was already 



184 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

handling his clay with pleasure and skill. 
But the most remarkable work was that 
of a man who had lost his right arm. 
Before the war, like the others, he had 
been a "cultivateur," never conscious of 
a talent that under the encouragement 
of a good teacher was developing aston- 
ishingly. With the pencil in his left hand, 
he produced designs of leaves, flowers 
and animals of great beauty. 

One of the strangest, saddest sights 
in the world is the workroom for artifi- 
cial limbs. Here men who have lost 
their own arms and legs sit construct- 
ing arms and legs for their comrades 
who are to lose theirs on the battlefield. 
A soldier who had his right arm and all 
but two fingers of his left hand shot 
away, was filing, hammering, and shap- 
ing an artificial arm. A man with half 
of each forearm gone was able, by means 
of a simple leather appliance, to make 
thirty-five brushes a day. Here they 



THE MUTILES 185 

were making, too, the gymnasium ap- 
paratus for the muscular exercises which 
help to restore the equilibrium of their 
own bodies. 

After visiting all the workshops, we 
went to one of the cheery cottage dor- 
mitories. It was noon-time now, and 
the men, deciding that we were apt to 
pass that way, had quickly decorated 
the front porch with the flags of the 
Allies, daringly binding our American 
flag with them! Then with a yellow 
sand they had written on the darker 
earth in front of the cottage: "To the 
Welcome Ones — the Brave Allies" — 
(again they had included us !) "we offer 
the gratitude of their soldiers!" 



XXII 

THE LITTLE PACKAGE 

ONE morning in Antwerp I saw- 
women with string bags filled 
with all sorts of small packages, 
some with larger boxes in their arms, 
hurrying toward a door over which was 
the sign "Le Petit Paquet"— the Little 
Package. In the hallway many others 
were trying to decipher various posted 
notices. One black-haired woman, 
empty bag in hand, was going through 
the list marked "Kinds and quantities 
of food allowed in 'Le Petit Paquet' 
for our soldiers, prisoners in Germany." 
This, then told the story — husbands 
and sons were in prison — wives and 
mothers were here ! The posted notices, 
the organizations within achieved by 24 

186 



THE LITTLE PACKAGE 187 

devoted women — the mountains of little 
brown packages each carefully addrest, 
approved for contents and weight, and 
ready for shipment — these connected 
the two sad extremes. 

This morning the receiving-room was 
crowded, as it is every morning, I am 
told. The directors had been standing 
back of the long counters since 7:30; 
women of every class pressing along 
the front, depositing their precious 
offerings. 

Each prisoner is allowed a monthly 
500-gram parcel-post package, and a 10- 
pound box, which may contain, beside 
food, tobacco and clothing. The per- 
mitted articles include cocoa, chocolate 
and coffee; tinned fish and vegetables 
and soups; powdered milk and jam. 
Soap may be sent with the clothing. 
One mother had arranged her parcels in 
a pair of wooden sabots which she hoped 
to have passed. 



188 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

Such a rush of unwrapping, weighing, 
re-wrapping. There seemed hardly a 
moment for breathing, and yet somehow 
there was time to listen to stories, to 
answer questions, give courage to hun- 
dreds who found in these rooms their 
closest connection with their loved ones. 
One could see that they were loath to 
go — they would have liked to stay and 
watch the final wrapping and register- 
ing — to actually see their tokens to the 
train ! 

On this day there was a special gift 
box from Cardinal Mercier for every 
prisoner from the province. Antwerp 
has 6,000 prisoners in Germany, and 
through the offerings of relatives or 
friends, or of the city itself when these 
fail, each one receives a permitted gift. 

One sees at a glance what an enor- 
mous task the bookkeeping alone en- 
tails — record of contents, addresses of 
senders, distribution, registering of re- 



THE LITTLE PACKAGE 189 

ceived packages, and numberless other 
entries. And each month the instruc- 
tions are changing, which renders the 
work still more arduous. 

And one is astonished over and over 
again at the amount of sheer physical 
energy women are putting into their 
service. Belgium has some 40,000 pris- 
oners in Germany. In Brussels and 
other cities other women are repeating 
what the directors in Antwerp were do- 
ing that morning. 



XXIII 

THE GREEN BOX 

THERE are seven rooms in Brus- 
sels, each with a long table in the 
middle, and with rows upon rows 
of green wooden boxes (about the size 
of a macaroni box) on shelf-racks 
against walls. The racks, too, are 
painted the color of hope — the green 
which after the war might well deserve 
a place with the red, orange and black, 
for having so greatly comforted the peo- 
ple when all display of their national 
colors was supprest. Each box has a 
hook in front from which hangs a paste- 
board card, marked with a number; it 
hangs there if the box is full, when 
empty it is filed. 

190 



THE GREEN BOX 191 

THe first morning I happened in on 
one of these sections, I found a director 
and three pretty young girls feverishly 
busy with hundreds and hundreds of 
little paper bags. There were as many 
green boxes as the table would hold, 
arranged before them, with scales at 
either end. They were running back 
and forth from the pantry with a bowl 
or an apronful of something, and then 
weighing and pouring into the bags 
tiny portions of beans and chicory, salt 
and sugar, bacon and other things. 
They weighed and poured as fast as they 
could and with almost joyous satisfac- 
tion tucked the little bags one after an- 
other into the boxes. Then they dove 
into the big vegetable baskets at one end 
of the room, and each box was made gay 
with a lettuce or cauliflower. For some 
there were bottles of milk, or a few pre- 
cious potatoes or eggs. If the egg chest 
Had been gold, it could hardly have been 



192 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

more treasured. For a moment it 
seemed the war must be a horrible 
dream. This was really the day before 
Christmas ! There were even a few red 
apples — as a special surprize, some one 
had contributed two kilos that day. 
Since they were obviously far short of 
enough to furnish one for each box, the 
directors decided to tuck one into the 
box for each mother whom they knew 
to have a little boy or girl. Box after 
box took its place on the shelves until 
finally, by two o'clock, all gaps were 
filled, and a curious wall-garden grew 
half-way up to the ceiling. It might well 
have been Christmas, but actually this 
scene had been repeated two days a 
week, week in and week out, for over 
two and a half years, and nobody stops 
to question how many long months it 
must continue. 

Some time before the last box was on 
its shelf, the first woman with a string 



THE GREEN BOX 193 

bag on her arm arrived. She was care- 
fully drest, intelligent-looking, a woman 
of about fifty. Later I found that be- 
fore the war she had a comfortable 
home, with servants and a motor-car. 
She slipt quietly along the racks till she 
found the card with her number, took 
her box from the shelf and transferred 
the tiny sacks and the two eggs to her 
string bag. Then she placed the little 
packet of empty bags and string she 
was returning on the table, and, after 
answering a few questions about her 
two children, went slowly downstairs. 
None but the Committee, or equally un- 
fortunate ones who came as she did, 
need know she had been there. This 
was Wednesday; she could come again 
on Friday. Other women came, and, as 
the first, each could go to her box with- 
out asking, and find the precious pack- 
ages — mere mouthfuls as they seemed 
to me! 



194 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

I thought I smelled soup, and fol- 
lowed Madame ... to a little side room 
where I saw chairs and a white-covered 
table. Her cook was just depositing a 
big can of thick soup which she had been 
preparing at home, and which Madame 
had ordered brought to the center each 
distribution day. Any one who wishes 
may slip into this room on her way out, 
sit at a dainty table, and drink a bowl 
of hot soup. 

By half-past two the place was rilled. 
Dozens of women were busy with their 
bags and boxes, while half a dozen di- 
rectors were tidying up, storing strings 
and sacks, filing cards, washing utensils; 
there was a most heartening atmosphere 
of busyness and cheerfulness. And all 
the while one group was telling its story 
to the other and receiving the comfort 
warm hearts could give. I overheard the 
promise of a bed to one, or coal to 
another, and over and over again the 



THE GREEN BOX 195 

"Yes, I understand; I, too, am without 
news." From all the husbands and sons 
at the front no word ! These women met 
on the ground of their common suffer- 
ing. One of the saddest of all sad things 
happened that afternoon, when a mother, 
on seeing the lovely "unnecessary" apple, 
burst into tears. For so long, so long, 
her little Marie had had nothing but the 
ration prescribed to keep her from starv- 
ing. This mother broke down as she 
dropt the red apple into her bag. 

These were all people who had been 
well-off, even comfortable, but whose 
funds either suddenly, at the beginning, 
or gradually through the two terrible 
years, had been exhausted. Mostly their 
men were in the trenches; there were 
children or old people to care for; they 
had done their utmost, but at last were 
forced to accept help. I wondered how 
these few pitiful little bags could make 
any difference. The slice of unsmoked 



196 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

bacon was neither so broad nor so thick 
as the palm of my hand, and yet that 
was to be their meat and butter for three 
days! In this distribution center it 
seemed absolutely nothing, but when I 
visited the homes later I saw it was a 
great deal. 

In Brussels there were in October, 
I916, no less than 5,000 "Pauvres Hon- 
teux" or "Ashamed Poor" (there must be 
many more now) being helped through 
the seven sections of this "Assistance 
Discrete," each of which carries the same 
beautiful motto, "Donne, et tais-toi," 
"Give, and be silent." At the very be- 
ginning of the war a great-hearted 
woman saw where the chief danger of 
misery lay. The relief organizations 
would natu/ally first look after the 
wounded, the homeless, the very poor. 
Those who were accustomed to accept 
charity would make the earliest demands. 
But what about those whose business was 



THE GREEN BOX 197 

slowly being ruined, whose reserves were 
small? What about school-teachers, 
artists, and other members of profes- 
sional classes? And widows living on 
securities invested abroad, or children of 
gentle upbringing, whose fathers had 
gone to the front expecting to return in 
three or four months? She saw many 
of them starving rather than go on the 
soup-lines. 

She had a vision of true mutual aid. 
Each person who had should become the 
sister of her who had not. There should 
be a sharing of individual with individual. 
She did not think of green boxes or sec- 
tions, but of person linked with person 
in the spirit of Fraternity. But the num- 
ber of the desperate grew too rapidly, 
her first idea of direct individual help 
had to be abandoned, and one after 
another distribution centers were organ- 
ized. An investigator was put in charge 
of each center who reported personally 



198 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

on all the cases that were brought in, 
either directly or indirectly to the com- 
mittee. The Relief Committee granted a 
subsidy of 10,000 francs a month, which, 
one sees at a glance, can not nearly cover 
the need. So day after day the directors 
of each section canvass their districts for 
money and food, and by dint of an un- 
tiring devotion raise the monthly 10,000 
to about 28,000 francs. But, unfor- 
tunately, every day more of war means 
wretched ones forced to the wall, and 
this sum is always far from meeting the 
distress. We have only to divide the 
30,000 francs by the 5,000 on the lists, 
to see what, at best, each family may re- 
ceive. 

I went with Mademoiselle . . . , an in- 
vestigator, to visit one of these families. 
A charming old gentleman received us. 
I should say he was about seventy-three. 
He had been ill, and was most cheerful 
over what he called his "recovery," tho 



THE GREEN BOX 199 

to us he still looked far from well. The 
drawing-room was comfortable, spot- 
lessly clean; there was no fire. We 
talked of his children, both of whom were 
married; one son was in Italy, another in 
Russia — the war had cut off all word 
or help from both. He himself had been 
a successful engineer in his day, but he 
had not saved much, his illness and two 
years of war had eaten up everything. 
He was interested in Mexico and in the 
Panama Canal, and we chatted on until 
Mademoiselle felt we must go. As we 
were shaking hands, she opened her black 
velvet bag and took out an egg which 
she laughingly left on the table as her 
visiting card. She did it perfectly, and 
he laughed back cheerily, "After the 
war, my dear, I shall certainly find the 
hen that will lay you golden eggs!" 
Outside, I still could hardly pull myself 
together — one egg as a precious gift to a 
dignified old gentleman-engineer! Could 



200 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

it be possible? "But," explained Made- 
moiselle, "if I had not given him that 
egg, he would not have any eggV Eggs 
were costing about ten cents each. "Of 
course, we never even discuss meat," she 
added; "but he has been quite ill, and he 
must have an egg at least every two or 
three days!" 

The woman we visited next did not 
have a comfortable home, but a single 
room. She had been for many years a 
governess in a family in Eastern Bel- 
gium, but just before the war both she 
and the family had invested their money 
in a savings concern which had gone to 
pieces, and from that day she had been 
making the fight to keep her head above 
water. She had come to Brussels, was 
succeeding fairly well, when she was taken 
ill. She had had an operation, but after 
months there was still an open wound, and 
she could drag herself about only with 
great difficulty. I found that Mademoiselle 



THE GREEN BOX 201 

takes her to the hospital, a matter of hours, 
three times a week for treatment, and, be- 
sides that, visits her in her room. As we 
were talking, a niece, also unfortunately 
without funds, came in to polish the stove 
and dust a bit. Mademoiselle reported 
that she was pretty sure of being able to 
bring some stockings to knit on her next 
visit. These would bring five cents a 
pair. And, as we left, she gave another 
egg f and this time a tiny package of 
cocoa, too. I discovered that every 
morsel this governess has to eat comes to 
her from Mademoiselle. And yet I have 
never been in a room where there was 
greater courage and cheerfulness. 

So it was as we went from square to 
square. In some homes there were chil- 
dren with no father; in others, grand- 
fathers with neither children nor grand- 
children; and between them, people well 
enough, young enough, but simply ruined 
by the war. Mademoiselle was going back 



202 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

to spend the night with an old lady we 
had visited the week before, and had 
found reading Anatole France. She 
had felt she must make her last testa- 
ment, and looking at her we agreed. 
That week she had received word that 
her only son, who was also her only kin, 
had been killed in the trenches three 
months before. 

Of course, every city has its hundreds 
of unfortunates; there must be every- 
where some form of "Assistance Dis- 
crete," but most of those on the lists of 
this war-time organization would in 
peace time be the ones to give, rather 
than receive, and their number is increas- 
ing pitifully as month follows month. 

Every one permitted to be in Belgium 
for any length of time marvels at the in- 
credible, unbreakable spirit of its people. 
They meet every new order of the mili- 
tary authorities with a laugh; when they 
have to give up their motor-cars, they 



THE GEEEN BOX 203 

ride on bicycles ; when all bicycle tires are 
requisitioned, they walk cheerfully; if the 
city is fined 1,000,000 marks, the laconic 
comment is : "It was worth it !" All the 
news is censored, so they manufacture 
and circulate cheerful news — nothing ever 
breaks through their smiling, defiant 
solidarity. One thing only in secret I 
have heard them admit, and that is the 
anguish of their complete separation from 
their loved ones at the front. Mothers 
and wives of every other nation may have 
messages ; they, never. 

The thing that has bound them thus 
together and buoyed them up is just this 
enveloping, inter-penetrating atmosphere 
of mutual aid, so beautifully exprest 
every day through the work of the "As- 
sistance Discrete." It was this vision of 
Fraternity in its widest sense that gave 
it birth, and every day the women of 
Belgium are making that vision a blessed 
reality. 



xxiv; 

THE "MOTHER OF BELGIUM'' 

MR. HOOVER'S visits to Brussels 
are crowded with conferences, 
endless complications to be 
straightened out, figures and reports to 
be accepted or rejected — with all the un- 
imaginable difficulties incident to the re- 
lief of an occupied territory. 

Responsible on the one hand to Eng- 
land, on the other to Germany, de- 
pendent always on the continued active 
support of his own countrymen and on 
the efficiency and integrity of the local 
relief organization, he fights his way 
literally inch by inch and hour by hour 
to bring in bread for the Belgian mother 
and her child. 

204 




8 



"THE MOTHER OF BELGIUM" 205 

It is easy to conceive of such service if 
the giver is in close touch with the mother 
and her need, but when he must be cut 
off from her — locked up with the grind, 
the disillusionment, the staggering obsta- 
cles, this unbroken devotion through the 
days and nights of more than two years, 
becomes one of the finest expressions of 
altruism the world has seen. 

The two years have left their mark — to 
strangers he must seem silent, grim, but 
every C. R. B. man knows what this 
covers. 

On one visit I persuaded him to take 
an hour from the bureau to go with me 
to one of the cantines for sub-normal 
children. He stood silently as the 1,600 
little boys and girls came crowding in, 
slipping in their places at the long, nar- 
row tables that cut across the great din- 
ing-rooms, and, when I looked up at him, 
his eyes had filled with tears. He watched 
Madame and her husband, a physician, 



206 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

going from one child to another, examin- 
ing their throats, or their eyes, taking 
them out to the little clinic for weighing, 
carrying the youngest in their arms, 
while the dozen white-uniformed young 
women hurrying up and down the long 
rows were ladling the potato-stew and 
the rice dessert. 

Then suddenly a black-shawled woman, 
evidently in deep distress, rushed up the 
stairs, and by us to Madame, to pour out 
her trouble. She was crying — she had 
run to the cantine, as a child to its 
mother, for comfort. Her little eight- 
year-old Marie, who had, only a week 
ago, been chosen as the loveliest child of 
the i, 600 to present the bouquet to the 
Minister's wife, and who, this very morn- 
ing, had seemed well and happy, was 
lying at home dead of convulsions. The 
cantine had been the second home of her 
precious one for over two years — where, 
but there, should she flee in her sorrow? 



"THE MOTHER OF BELGIUM" £07 

I turned toward Mr. Hoover, and he 
spoke these true words: "The women of 
Belgium have become the Mother of 
Belgium. In this room is the Relief of 
Belgium P 



XXV 

"OUT" 

THE Rotterdam canals were choked 
with barges, weighted with freight ; 
heavy trucks rattled down the 
streets, a whistle shrieked, telegraph wires 
hummed, motors flashed by — men were 
moving quickly, grouping themselves 
freely at corners; life — vivid, outspoken, 
free — crowded upon me, filling my eyes 
and ears. With a swift tremor of physical 
fear I huddled back in my seat. After 
eight months I was afraid of this thing! 
And "Inside" I had thought I realized 
the whole of the cruel numbness. Slowly 
I had felt it closing in about me, closing 
down upon me, shutting me in with them 
— with terrors and anguish, with human 
souls that at any moment a hand might 
reach in to toss — where? 

208 



XXVI 

FAREWELL 

I CAN think of no more beautiful, final 
tribute to the women of Belgium than 
that carried in their own words — 
words of tragedy, but words of widest 
vision and understanding and generosity, 
sent in farewell to us: 

"Oh, you who are going back in that 
free country of the United States, tell to 
all our sufferings, our distress; tell them 
again and again our cries of alarm, which 
come from our opprest and agonized 
hearts! You have lived and felt what 
we are living and feeling; we have un- 
derstood that, higher than charity which 
gives, you brought us charity which un- 
derstands and consoles! Your souls have 
bowed down over ours, our eyes with 

209 



210 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 

anxiety are looking in your friendly eyes. 
Over the big ocean our wishes follow you. 
Oh, might you there remember the little 
Belgium! The life which palpitates in 
her grateful heart — she owes it to you! 
You are our hope, our anchor! Help us! 
Do not abandon the zvork of charity you 
have undertaken! 

"Our endless gratitude goes to you, 
and from father to children, in the hovel 
and in the palace, we shall repeat your 
great heart, your high idealism, your 
touching charity T 



NOTE BY THE AUTHOR 



The increase in dependency in less than 
a year, as shown by a comparison of the 
following figures with those in this book, 
suggests more poignantly than any written 
account could, the daily deepening tragedy 
of Belgium: 

Present total on "Soupes" in whole of Belgium 3,032,089 

" " " in Greater Brussels 401,600 

" children in Belgium receiving 

eleven o'clock meal. 985.617 

" nursing or expectant mothers re- 
ceiving canteen meal 14,809 

" debilitated children receiving 

supplementary meal. . . . 53.311 

C. K. 

December, 1917. 



; ;! I 




